


The Cryptographer

by eloquated



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Kidlock, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unilock, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-01-31 07:31:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 25,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18586645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: It was a world unto itself; away from the bloodshed and the bombs, Bletchley was a world of numbers and puzzles.  It was the place for people who thought differently; who could look at the map and see the patterns that other people couldn’t.A secret place behind a high wall, where the calculations saved lives.  And ended them.





	1. Cover

 


	2. January 1926.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft Holmes could never remember the last Christmas before his brother was born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! 
> 
> This is a story I've been wanting to write for about a year, and finally got around to putting on the page! (Hey, better late than never, right?) 
> 
> Enjoy!

**January 1926.**  

Mycroft Holmes could never remember the last Christmas before his brother was born.  

He didn’t need to.  There was no mystery when every year had been the same.

Like everything else, it was quiet.  The house had been quiet, his parents had been quiet.  The stray cat that occasionally took shelter under their stairs hadn’t been seen for a week, and at seven, Mycroft was old enough to suspect the worst.  

Sometimes, Mycroft wondered if his entire life up to that point, had simply been spent in waiting.  An incomplete circuit, he had moved through the stillness of his childhood, gathering as much information as he could.

Because someday, whispered the wisdom of his child’s mind, he would need to know these things.  Everything. He would have someone to teach, and to share with. He wouldn’t be alone, because there would be another mind that followed the paths his did.

And while he waited, there was Mummy, and Father-- when he wasn’t in London, at least.  They were smart enough, in their own way; and Mummy was always happy to give him pages of sums and ciphers to puzzle out.  Something to keep his mind occupied and active.

There were no other children, but Mycroft wasn’t sure what he would have said to them, even if there had been.  How did one hold a conversation with a goldfish?

Did you tap the side of their bowl, hoping to watch them start, and swim away?  

Sometimes, there was even Uncle Rudyard.  On those weekends, Mycroft would watch from the bedroom door as his uncle shrugged off his suit jacket, and loosened his tie; tall and barrel chested, he was strong enough to pluck up Mycroft and set him on his shoulders.  In dark wool, and darker silk, he didn’t look much like Mycroft’s father, who was thin and had a much lighter complexion; and it had taken him a while to accept that they were brothers.

He does remember watching the transformation.  In secret, behind the walls of their house, where he knew he was safe, Rudyard Holmes would cast off his dark suits, and wash the sleek Brylcreem from his black hair.  

It was like watching a butterfly, and Mycroft didn’t think it was strange when his uncle draped himself in gauzy chiffon and silk stockings.  Rudyard was beautiful in soft pink taffeta, even when the shoulders of the gown hadn’t been tailored for a man of his physique; and Mycroft couldn’t entirely understand why his uncle looked so sad…

Just sometimes, when he looked in the mirror, and caught his reflection.  When he would smooth his palm over the lingering roughness of his beard, which remained no matter how closely he shaved.

And then he would catch sight of his nephew peeking around the door, and smile.  

Mycroft was never alone when his uncle was home.  And it didn’t matter if he wore suits, or afternoon dresses, because he was still brilliant.  Still had the same Holmes brain that Mycroft had inherited, too; and he was the only person to could properly challenge him.

Rudy would quiz him in Latin.  Would ask him about current events, and expected Mycroft to have an opinion.  And to be able to express it.

He'd given Mycroft his first book in French.  And it had been something of a joke -- a challenge for his quicksilver mind.  But the shape of the words in the little boy’s mind had been beautiful, and following French was German, Italian, Russian… Until the small shelf in his bedroom had groaned beneath the weight.

Rudy, who worked for the government, and whom Mycroft idolized-- he was the same person, whatever he wore.

“You must never tell anyone about this, Mycie.  It’ll be our secret. Yours, mine, and your parents.  Do you understand?”

And he didn’t, not really.  What could be so dangerous about clothes?  They were the same clothes his Mummy wore, and sometimes she let Uncle Rudy borrow her strings of pale pearls, or her wonderful shawl of pinpoint lace.  And they would laugh, and Mummy would remind Uncle Rudy that he was beautiful-- and wore it better than she did.

Perhaps, Mycroft thought, there were things about yourself you had to hide.  Even when those things were pretty, and made you happy.

And when he asked his Mummy, she’d looked sad, too.  She had the same expression she always did when he asked questions she didn’t know how to answer-- questions, she thought, that were too old for her little boy.

Didn’t she understand?  One day, he would need these answers, because he would have someone who asked the questions.  

“Sometimes, Myc... Some people have very strict ideas about what men and women are supposed to do.  Or how they’re supposed to dres. And your uncle would get in a great deal of trouble if you mentioned this to anyone.  So we must be quiet about it.”

Nothing was quiet after Sherlock.

He was perpetual motion, fuelled by limitless curiousity.  

He was the small hand that clutched Mycroft’s, and pulled him away from the quiet and out into the noise of the world.  And Mycroft held onto him as tightly as he could-- because his little brother was a balloon, floating up and away, and carried on by currents that his big brother couldn’t see.  Someone needed to keep him safe, or he might drift up into the sun and be lost forever.

Mycroft would give him riddles, and puzzles, and draw maps where X marked the spot.  And at night, Sherlock would creep down the hall to his room, and curl in with his head pillowed on his brothers chest, and his cold toes burrowed into the warm space behind Mycroft’s knees.

Sherlock saw all of the beautiful parts of him.  And Mycroft didn’t have to hide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 💕


	3. December 1934.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home, oh home! Beautiful and solid, the edifice of his childhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, because I'm stuck home sick, and had time to get this one edited! 
> 
> I should also mention that I'm the worst person in the world for tagging things, so if I miss any, please tell me! Thanks!

**December 1934** .

Home, oh home!  Beautiful and solid, the edifice of his childhood.  Bright, golden light spilled from the frosted windows, and the wreath on the door was gilded with the cold, sparkling strokes.

It felt like he’d been away forever, even though it had only been a few months.  At fifteen, Mycroft was the youngest student admitted to Cambridge in over a century; and his parents were so very proud.  

But the expectations were different, and even if the classes were still no challenge?  The change of lifestyle certainly had been. At university, he was expected to be self reliant, and independent-- and it suited Mycroft, but it had been an adjustment.

Mycroft wrote to his parents often, but his letters were carefully worded to only tell the good.  They didn’t need to know about his crippling homesickness, or the singular unhappiness that came with being so much younger than everyone else.

But now, wonderful now!  For a few weeks, he didn’t have to worry at all.

With his bag gripped in one hand, Mycroft bolted from his father’s car, his shoes skittering on the icy gravel driveway.  When he threw open the door, he could smell home; like old wood and fresh lemon polish, beneath the savoury-sweetness wafting from the kitchen.

And there was Sherlock.

“Mycie!”  He trilled at the top of his voice, “You’re finally home!”

With unfettered delight, Sherlock vaulted from the staircase, and his skinny arms locked around Mycroft’s waist, “You took forever!  I thought you were never going to get here!”

“Then you’re a very silly, impatient bee, aren’t you?  Of course I was coming home! I wouldn’t want to spend Christmas with anyone else but you.”

Home, Mycroft had realized in his months away, wasn’t built in stone and mortar (though there was something comforting in the solid old walls).  No, home was his little brother’s upturned and grinning face. 

In the quick mind that mirrored his own, and which he had missed desperately.  

“Did you hear about the Loch Ness monster, Mycie?  They have a real picture of it, now! And it was in the news and all!” 

It seemed like Sherlock had grown half a head since Mycroft had been away, but he was the same gangly little boy at heart; draped against his big brother’s side, and holding on like he might evaporate.

Sherlock had been furious when he left for school; but to his piercing relief, he seemed like he’d forgiven him.  

A few months of puzzles and ciphers by post seemed to have mollified him.  It had become a game, their letters in code; Mycroft’s holding riddles for his little brother, and Sherlock’s proudly proclaiming the answers.  

Even if the rest of the letters were only fragments of life-- their classmates, their deductions, news of their parents, and of the wider world at large-- the codes were their secret.  And so far nobody, not Mummy, and not Mycroft’s nosy roommate, had managed to crack them.

“I’ve seen the picture, Lock, but are you entirely certain it’s real?”  Mycroft didn’t believe in sea monsters; perhaps there were giant squid, he could accept that.  The depths of the ocean was a strange place -- but there were certainly no mythical Kraken. No prehistoric monsters living in Scotland.  And one grainy photo from Loch Ness wasn’t going to change his mind!

But Sherlock only beamed, and rolled his pale eyes, blue and green like beach glass, “If it isn’t, there are going to be some very mad scientists!“

“And are you one of them?”

“Maybe I shall be!  When I’m finished school like you.  You can’t learn to be a pirate at university, but I could be a scientist!  Then I could solve all the mysteries in the world, and I’d know everything!”

“Everything is a lot of things to know, Lock.  Are you certain you’re up to it?” Mycroft volleyed back, and the sting was taken from his teasing words when he hugged Sherlock around his skinny shoulders, “You certainly will need your Mind Palace, then!”

“And you’ll still send me riddles, even when I know everything?”

“Even when you know everything, I’ll still be older!  And I’ll know everything… And just a little extra, too.”

“You won’t!  You can’t know more than everything!”  Sherlock protested; because he was fairly sure that even Mycroft, who did seem to know everything -- or at least enough of everything to be impressive to his little brother-- couldn’t manage that.

Mycroft’s chest tightened unexpectedly, and he hugged Sherlock hard around the shoulders.  This was what he had missed while he was away; just this. The two of them. “Then I’ll have to create new things to know, brother mine.  Otherwise the world would be very dull, don’t you think?”

Sherlock rested his curly head against his brother’s side, and for a moment he lapsed quiet, considering the question.  “And then I would have to invent new things for you, too. Like a code so complicated even you couldn’t crack it!” Messy curls fell across his forehead when he beamed up at Mycroft, and his cheeks coloured with embarrassment when his big brother smoothed them out of his eyes.

“You’re beginning to look like one of the Lost Boys, Lockie.  You’ll have to let Mummy cut it soon-- yes, I know, it’s hateful, but there you have it.  You can’t be a pirate if you can’t see through your own hair.” 

With a scowl, Sherlock shoved his curls aside, and buried his face in Mycroft’s chest.  They could both feel how much taller Mycroft had gotten, just since September; the last vestiges of his childhood softness turned skinny, and his voice another octave lower.  But neither of them wanted to mention it.

Some things they just didn’t have the words for.  And this was something that felt like a parting; like another sign that Mycroft was rushing ahead, and Sherlock was being left behind.

Something that stretched the seven years between them into a wide, gaping chasm.

“Will you stay,  _ if _ I let her? And make sure she doesn’t clip my ears, or poke my eyes?”  

Mycroft wanted to laugh; their mother had never been anything but careful!  “I swear. I’ll stand beside you the whole while. And hold your hand, if you need me to.”

“I won’t!  I’m not a scared baby anymore!  I just… Don’t want her to cut my ears off!”

“Very logical.  Your ears will be safe, I promise.”

“And the rest of me, too?”  Sherlock pressed, and his hand curled into Mycroft’s jacket to bunch the fabric between his fingers.

Mycroft breathed a laugh, and hugged him properly-- because they had no audience, and it had been eons since September, and he’d missed him desperately.

“All of you.  Top to toes, Lockie.  What sort of a big brother would I be if I let anything happen to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The "surgeon's photograph" is reportedly the first photo of the Loch Ness monster's head and neck, and was published in the Daily Mail in April 1934.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster#%22Surgeon's_photograph%22_(1934))


	4. May 1936.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft had never been much for social gatherings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note before this chapter--
> 
> This story does contain period typical homophobic ideation. I don't share these beliefs.
> 
> Homosexuality wasn't removed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) until 1973, so this story is still decades away from that.
> 
> Sorry for the grim opening, but I just wanted to make that clear!

**May 1936.**

Mycroft had never been much for social gatherings.  They were too much noise, and too many people crammed into one place.  Too many expectations for him to dance with girls he didn’t find interesting, or alluring-- and no chance to dance with anyone he did.

Which was a very short list, currently topped by the wonderfully handsome Gregory Lestrade.  Who, incidentally, had said he would be there that night. Shortly before Mycroft had ‘grudgingly’ agree to go as well.

It had nothing to do with the way Greg seemed to always catch his eye across the room.  Or the butterflies that followed those sweet, stolen glances. 

Greg had the sort of easy charm that made everyone like him.  And Mycroft did; with the sort of hopeless crush that had followed him all year.

He was tall, and good, and the sort of man that shouldn’t look twice at someone like Mycroft (at least, in Mycroft’s opinion).  Not because he was a man-- though it certainly didn’t help-- but because Mycroft was simply… Different. He wasn’t handsome like Greg, with his deep eyes, and the dark hair that, even in his early twenties, had a few strands of grey.

Mycroft rather like them, they gave his face character.

And he had the sort of bones, Mycroft thought, that would stand well against time. Greg Lestrade would get better with age, he was certain of it.

Half distracted by his reverie, Mycroft still couldn’t miss the way Greg would smile every time he passed.

Each time his dance circuit with Helen-- lovely Helen, with her chestnut coloured hair pulled back in combs, and the chiffon of her dress sparkling with each merry step.  She only had eyes for Greg, and they looked so happy together. And why shouldn’t she? She was young, and talented, and the glittering stone on her ring finger declared for all the world that she was going to be married.

Helen, who had introduced Mycroft to Greg, and who was determined to win the Nobel Prize for Physics before she was thirty-five.  

Sometimes, Mycroft was certain she’d puzzled out his secret.  But she’d never mentioned it, and their friendship had seemed largely unaltered. And so Mycroft had allowed the détente to hold.  

But with every turn around the floor, Gregory’s eyes sought out Mycroft in the crowd.  

Amidst all the black suited men, he cut an impressive figure in his neat new uniform; and Mycroft had never been drawn to a man in the army, but for Greg he’d been forced to make an exception.  He cut a trim figure in the muted greens, his sleeve already branded with the single V insignia of a Lance Corporal.

Greg, who had studied the social sciences, because he understood people in a way that Mycroft never had.  And who wanted to join Scotland Yard, because he wanted to keep people safe. And who had joined the army because it was in his genes.  His father, and his father before…

Five generations of Lestrade men had served King and country, and Greg had refused to break with that tradition.

_ It’s just for a few years, then I’ll be out.  Join the Met, do some good. _

But across the water, Germany had a new chancellor; and Mycroft wished he could push away his sense of foreboding.  Something in the air felt tenuous, and waiting to topple.

“Don’t look so glum!  It’s supposed to be a party, Mycroft, not a wake.  Helen, love, I’m going to take this sad sack outside for some fresh air, before he thinks himself into a foul mood!”  Greg’s warm, teasing voice broke Mycroft’s unhappy reverie; and before he could protest that he was perfectly fine, thank you all the same, Greg had taken his arm and was wheeling them both towards the entrance.

His hand was hot, even through Mycroft’s wool blazer; a weight against his arm that made his heart beat double fast.

“Be nice, Greg!  I’m sorry, Mycroft!”  Helen’s laughter followed them from the room, bright and effervescent, and it made Mycroft feel wretched.

For an instant Mycroft tried to tell himself that Greg was telling the truth; a quick breath of air, a cigarette, and back inside so he could bask in his fiancee’s glowing attention.  Passed the hedgerows they went, and Greg’s arm slid-- heavy, solid,  _ perfect _ , and anxious, all colliding at once-- around his shoulders. 

This wasn’t frowned upon, it was  _ illegal _ .  It was two years hard labour in Pentonville or Wandsworth, if one even survived that long.  

It was being labeled as a  _ deviant.   _ A sexual offender, and all of the sick, predatory urges that came with it.  The end of his career, his prospects, his future. It was the thing that had killed Oscar Wilde, and would remove Mycroft from a world he desperately needed to be a part of.

_ “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” _

Mycroft knew what he was.  Had suspected when he was thirteen, been certain when he was fifteen-- and now, at seventeen, his body hummed with a tingling current that pooled in his belly nervously.

But he also knew that being himself would mean leaving his brother to contend with the world alone.  It was the image of Sherlock, watching him with shame from the stands, that has always stayed his hands.  He knew the vile things people would assume, and would ask: 

Had Mycroft ever touched him? Ever crept into his bed like a monster?  Or had he bribed Sherlock to touch him, instead?

Had Mycroft ever beaten him?  Hurt him?

Had Mycroft ever engaged in sexual acts with beasts?  With the unwilling?

With the dead?

He could never allow himself to forget.  But it was quiet outside, and Greg’s arms around him were so very warm; it was still, a liminal space where the music was faded and echoed thinly from inside.  And there was no one else around, when Greg’s arm tightened on his shoulders, and guided them both around the back of the hall.

It was the most beautiful night.  The sky was speckled with bright little stars, and the grounds still smelled like fresh grass and damp air.  “We can’t- Gregory--” Mycroft’s voice sounded thin and quick in his ears, faster even than the trip of his heart in his throat.  

“Nobody can see us.  They’re all inside.”

God, Mycroft wished he'd had something stronger than lime and soda. 

And he was so solid, so very real, as he pressed Mycroft back against the red brick wall.  Greg’s fingers were dry and calloused, but gentle; and with a sigh that sounded dredged up from some intangible part of his soul, he cupped Mycroft’s cheek in his hand.  “I’m leaving in a few days. Just one kiss, to remember you by?”

“Helen is waiting for you inside!  Weren’t you planning to marry her?”  Mycroft’s voice pitched up an octave, and he could feel the puff of warm breath on his face when Greg chuckled; Guinness and smoke, and the touch of something astringent…  

_ Aftershave _ .  His mind supplied when Greg leaned in closer.

“I am, and I will.  Helen, she.. She knows, I’m.. different, yeah?  She said it doesn’t bother her, so long as I’m not with anyone else after we’re married.  But, Myc... I’ve been wanting to kiss you for ages, and if I never see you again, I don’t want to be wishing I’d been braver. We’ve been dancing around this for a year.. Don’t you want to know what it’d be like?”

Even in the dark, Mycroft could see how soft his eyes were.  And it was easy-- so terribly easy-- to thread his own arms around Greg’s broad shoulders.  Mycroft had been close to people before; the girls he danced with, when he could be persuaded, mosly.  And they’d never felt like this. 

Where they had been soft, small; narrow waists shaped in, and the plush weight of their breasts against his chest when they rested against him during the slow numbers.  And Mycroft had always felt rather neutral on the subject; he didn’t mind their closeness, while the music played-- but he’d never had any desire to be closer.

This?  Was something else entirely. 

“Greg, I-”

And then their lips met, and Mycroft had no idea what he was doing.  It was clumsy; too closed, and nervous, giving way to the click of teeth and the taste of liquor and faded toothpaste.  Mycroft’s skin prickled with goosebumps beneath his jacket, and Greg only pulled him in tighter, his arm curled hard around his hips.

Just one kiss, to remember him by.

His first kiss, but not Greg’s.  

And Helen waiting inside for her fiance to come in from the cold.

It was a mistake, of course.  All of it.

But for just a moment on that balmy summer night, Mycroft let himself be wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Information on British military ranks can be found at:  
> (https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112133708)
> 
> 2\. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Is a quote from Oscar Wilde. The poet and playwright was convicted of homosexuality in 1895.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde)


	5. September 1939.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the common room, all had fallen silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! It's been a strange week here, but finally starting to feel like myself again (begone, foul germs!) so hopefully I'll be able to update more this coming week.
> 
> 💕

**September 1939.**

_ “For the second time in the lives of most of us, we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain. We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called to meet the challenge of a principle, which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the _

_ world.”  _

In the common room, all had fallen silent.  Mycroft’s ears rushed with the sound of blood; a pulsing, thudding sound that nearly blotted out the crackle of King George’s voice over the radio.  It was static and shock, an expression shared by everyone else gathered around the speaker; until James McMillan reached over and turned it up a little louder.

It was the motion, more than the noise, that pulled Mycroft from his frozen stare.

War.  

Mycroft himself had missed the last one; he’d been born ten months after the armistice (and people could make of that what they wished!).  But it was recent history-- the war that had nearly starved the country; and the war that had driven a wedge between his father, and his Uncle Rudy, that had taken the better part of the next decade to heal.

And now they were here again.  From his chair, Mycroft looked out the window; this part of the campus overlooked the lawns, coloured soft in the late afternoon light.  It was beautiful here-- but in his mind’s eye, Mycroft could map out across the grass, and over the river. Through the trees, and the cities, like dotted lines on a map.

61 miles from Cambridge to London.

670 miles from London to Berlin.

For a total of 731.  It had felt like a larger number, yesterday.

Behind Mycroft’s eyelids, the map of the world seemed to contract, small than it had been an hour before.

When he swallowed, his throat stuck hard, and Mycroft coughed gingerly against the back of his hand to loosen the stricture.  Even his tie felt too tight, but in his pride he refused to loosen the knot. 

It was just a tie.  Just as it had been a minute before.  It wasn’t suffocating him. And he would not allow his imagination to run off.  There would be more than enough of that already.

With deliberate steadiness, Mycroft reached for his cigarette case, resting on the side table with his slowly cooling cup of tea.  There was something reassuring about the ritual of it; the gleam of the case, the lightness of the cigarette in his fingers, the snap of the match, and the brief acrid burn of sulfur and tobacco.  Inhaling deeply, Mycroft felt the heat of it at the back of his throat, and the instant of lightheadedness that always followed.

It grounded him, as the King’s voice continued in the background.

_ “The task will be hard.  There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield, but we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.  If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with God's help, we shall prevail.” _

His shaking exhale was scarcely audible behind his cupped hands, smoke curling through his fingers, and Mycroft had little attention for the King’s words of encouragement and strength.  Let the others listen, and be comforted.

Mycroft preferred logical facts to reassuring platitudes.

His father would certainly not be called up to fight again.  He was too old, and the leg he’d broken in the first war had never properly healed.  No, he would be safe in Sussex with his mother, and baby brother. 

The last war had lasted four years.  But, God willing, they had learned from their mistakes-- even with that worst case estimate, Sherlock would only be seventeen.  Too young to enlist. 

Or drafted.

He would be safe.

He didn’t let himself think about Greg.

They’d mostly lost touch after he’d left for Sandhurst; Mycroft had been occupied with his studies, and Greg with his training.  Their letters had started briskly-- one, sometimes two, in a week-- both of them flush with their fresh memories and the excitement of change.  But the semester had rolled on, and training had become gruelling, and eventually the letters had drawn shorter, more sporadic, and finally tapered off entirely.

He’d invited Mycroft to his wedding, but it had seemed too strange to attend.  Helen had signed the invitation in her curling, feminine hand, and the sight of it--  _ Please, Mycroft, you know how much it would mean to us both!  Greg is being stationed with the 4th Infantry and is being deployed to France. I know he’d want to see you before he leaves.  _ \-- had churned unhappily in his stomach.

No, best not to think about him at all.  No good would come of that. 

And Mycroft, himself…

Already, the shock in the room had given way to hushed, whispering voices.  Most of them were Mycroft’s age, or older-- and historically, he thought sickly, twenty was a very good age to go off to war.  

It didn’t take a genius to know how it would go for them, and Mycroft Holmes was much more than your garden-variety genius.  War was waged by people who would never see the front lines. It was their game, moving pieces on map, and reckoning the cost of victory against human life.

It was terrible math.  

It had been terrible when men fought with sticks.  And swords. And bayonets. 

And it was still terrible when they had submarines, and tanks.  And dropped bombs on one another under cover of darkness.

But Mycroft thought it was the sort of math he could be very good at.  It was, in essence, a complex puzzle with thousands of moving pieces. It needed a grasp of language-- which he had, fluently, in many.  A head for figures and sums-- again, no great struggle. And the memory to keep it straight in your mind.

And to keep your mouth shut.

He was already expected to start at Whitehall at the end of the month.  And whatever his uncertain future might hold, it seemed a a better place for his skills than the recruiting office would offer.  

In slow silence, Mycroft looked around the room at the young men he'd seen every day since they started at Cambridge.  He knew their names, and their faces.  They were people.  

These boys, his classmates… They would leave.  They’d enlist for patriotism, and for glory. And they would find blood, and death-- and they would not come back the same men.  That was the reality of it.

There was more to war than standing on the front lines with your bayonet.  

And Mycroft intended to prove that he was more useful alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. On September 3, 1939, King George announced that the country was once again going to war.  
> (https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Kings-Speech/)
> 
> 2\. WWI ended in November of 1918... So for anyone keeping track of the dates? Mycroft was born September 1919, and Sherlock in January 1926.


	6. November 1940.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mr… Ah…” 
> 
> “Holmes. Mycroft, A.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick thanks to everyone that's taken a moment to send me a comment, they've been so insightful and incredibly encouraging! 💕

**November 1940.**

“Mr… Ah…”  

“Holmes.  Mycroft, A.”

“Oh yes, there’s your name!  The testing is just about to start, if you’d like to take a seat.”

The assistant was a nervous, twitchy little man, his skinny fingers grasping his clipboard like a lifeline.  Already, there was a thin sheen of stress sweat on his forehead, that had nothing to do with the clammy, forced-air warmth of the meeting room.

It was a claustrophobic space, with dark, wood panelled walls that were supposed to make the place seem formal.  Businesslike.

For Mycroft, they simply reminded him of his father’s office at home, or the library back at school.  Nothing intimidating about that.

The whole situation was something of a mystery.  For a year, Mycroft had been working at Whitehall, quietly translating captured messages from across the Channel.  It was important work, even if his limited clearance barred him from seeing anything especially interesting. But little by little, he had learned the ropes, and the faces, and taken the first solid steps up the ladder.

When his overseer had pulled him aside that morning-- _“You’ll be expected in Meeting Room 4 at 11:45.” --_ Mycroft hadn’t been given any more information than that.  And asking Mr. Ebbing would accomplish nothing; that much he was certain of.

Twenty young men sat at their individual desks, in orderly rows; each one holding a book, a handful of pages, and a pencil.  More than intimidating, it felt like being back in primary school again; and Mycroft’s knees bumped the bottom of the desk when he sat down.

“Now, gentlemen, I trust we all know why we’re here.”  The man at the front of the room, in the nondescript black suit said.  He seemed calm, but even from the back row, Mycroft could make out the telltale twitch of his fingers.  Not nervous, not like his assistant.

Impatient. A busy man with other places he needed to be.

Recently divorced-- no.  Still married, but not wearing his wedding ring.  Preparing for divorce. Not taking much time with his appearance, but his thin moustache was still neatly trimmed.  

Frustrated with the service, but loyal to his country.  

Unhappy behind a desk, but he was pushing fifty and not as fit as he had been.  He resented all the men in the room, but wasn’t aware that it was the underlying source of his agitation.

The man’s features were pointed and craggy, and he watched them from beneath beetled brows.  For a moment, Mycroft wondered what he saw in them. _Not much_ , his expression seemed to say, _But you lot are the best we could find._

Cryptographers, puzzle enthusiasts.  Translators. Mathematicians. People that saw patterns in places that nobody else could.  Some of them were the best minds in their fields; men whose papers Mycroft had studied in university.  And one or two he didn’t recognize at all.

They were a motley assortment.

“You’ll have twenty-five minutes to finish the first part of this test.  If you do not finish, you will be disqualified, and barred from proceeding with this evaluation.  Is that understood? Yes? Good -- the test will begin…” The man looked at the clock at the back of the room, his words hanging for an instant, “Now.”

_Find the pattern in the following sets._

_Translate the following idioms and statements into a minimum of 3 languages, and explain._

_You have intercepted a transmission.  Decode the message into German, and translate to English._

They were codes, ciphers, just like the ones he’d traded with Sherlock for years.  His pencil balanced loosely on his fingers, Mycroft eyed the first question carefully.  At first glance it looked like a jumble of letters-- and for most people that’s all they would ever see.

But Mycroft could see the patterns rising from the page; the repetition in the letters that only seemed random.  A calculated random.

 _Gromark code_.  Distinctive.  He simply needed to puzzle out the transposition block.  Easy.

 _Playfair_ , in sets of letters-- now, where was the first?  Ah. There. Top left corner, as if they could hide it in plain sight.

Something was about the last set was strange; more numbers than letters.  Neat rows of numbers that didn’t make a damn bit of sense-- but then, that was the whole purpose of a cipher.

Around him, Mycroft could hear the rustle of pages, and the creak of desk chairs when the other men shifted.  The scratch of pencils, and the rubbery squeak of their erasers. But his eyes never left his page.

The solution.  It was there… It was…

Numbers to letters.  No. Letters to numbers, and...

 _Syllabary_.  

Yes.  That was it.

With a mental click, Mycroft could see the pattern emerge.  It was no more difficult than the ciphers his brother had sent him over the years; English to Greek, to numbers.  To unreadable symbols, and back to English again.

Codes that needed a translation block, starting with Q (of all the letters!) and ending with P, in which all of the vowels-- save E-- had been removed.  

Mycroft had been contending with Sherlock’s increasingly mad and brilliant puzzles since childhood.  And if this was meant to be a challenge? Then the Home Office had drastically underestimated their opponent.  

These were established patterns; known combinations.  Ciphers, yes…

But they were restrained.  Thinking only inside the box.

The Germans wouldn’t be doing that.  They wouldn’t be hobbling themselves with codes that had already been cracked.

For months, the Nazi fighter planes had scoured London by night, dropping bombs over the city and setting it ablaze.  An indiscriminate rain of destruction that turned houses to rubble, and trapped people-- civilians-- under tons of brick and mortar.

They weren’t targeting military installations; these were people having dinner, and trying to sleep.  People who wanted their lives to return-- impossibly-- to the way it had been before.

The German army intended to win this war.  

And if the British intended to stop them -- and they did -- they would need more than smoke, mirrors, and substitution codes.

With nothing left to do, Mycroft doubled checked his answers, and turned his page over.  The rest of the room was still hard at work, frantically scribbling on their loose pages; and erasing their conclusions and mistakes just as quickly.  Even without looking at their answers, Mycroft knew most of them wouldn’t finish.

They would be thanked, and sent back to their lives with no idea of why they had been called here.  

Smoothing his thumb down the side of his black pencil, Mycroft patiently began to etch out a code of his own on the back of his page.  Something challenging. Something to remind the Home Office of one very important thing (if, indeed, they could solve it at all).

W E  M U S T  D O  B E T T E R .

He still had eleven minutes to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. You can find some information on other types of cipers at  
> (http://www.cryptogram.org/resource-area/cipher-types/)
> 
> 2\. The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against Britain in 1940 and 1941.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz)


	7. November 1941.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lazy coils of cigarette smoke wreathed the ceiling...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A second chapter today! And just before I have to creep off to work-- success!

**November 1941.**

Lazy coils of cigarette smoke wreathed the ceiling, creating a thick cloud that occasionally drifted through the crack in the window when the breeze picked up.  The barracks at Bletchley weren’t much to write home about; two men to a room, and a small sitting area that doubled as a communal space, place to hang your wet coats and boots, and occasional gambling parlour.

And after five days of damp socks and pissing rain, it seemed like Diplomat was the name of the game that evening.

In most places, Mycroft supposed, they would play poker, or gin rummy; but at Bletchley, the ludicrously complicated game of Diplomat-- with its questions, clues and memorization-- had caught on like wildfire.  

“Mycroft!  Come give me a hand, would you?  Barnes and Riley are destroying me tonight, and if I have to lose to someone, might as well be you!”  Alan Connelly had been Mycroft’s room mate for the better part of the last year; a few years older, he was still a bit of a scamp, with a perpetual smudge of black ink on his cheekbone.  He was the sort of disarmingly charming man that drew people to him… Even his rather introverted roommate.

From the doorway, Mycroft could see that the stakes for the game were much higher than he’d usually play.  The pot-- in this case, quite literally-- was crammed with bills and small coins. But then, all three men at the table could, and often did, live quite comfortably beyond their wages.  The benefit of being impossibly wealthy, and set to inherit.

And then he saw it.  Just beside Barnes’ foot, was a case.  A sleek, black, hard-shelled violin case, to be precise.  

Barnes’ followed the line of his gaze and smirked triumphantly, a flick of his hand motioning for Mycroft to take a look, “Ran out of cash, but this aught to cover it.  And then some. Nice, innit? My mother sent me to lessons for years, but I always hated the thing!”

The violin was a thing of beauty.  

In dark, honeyed wood, it caught the light with a lustrous sheen.  Mycroft was a pianist, but he had spent a great deal of his childhood around his brother; and as he ran his fingers slowly over the elegant scroll work, Mycroft could imagine all too clearly how it would look in his brother’s hands.

 

_Dear brother,_

_How am I supposed to play when I’ve outgrown my violin?  It’s fit for a child, and my fingers are too long for it!  Mummy says I must make do, and there isn’t enough money at the moment to replace it.  That other people are going without food, or a roof over their head, and I should be grateful for what we do have._

_She often reminds me that Molly and Phillip can’t even be with their parents at the moment, or in their homes, because London is miserably too dangerous.  But I’m not sure how sorry I feel for them. At least here, they’re not going to get blown up. Which has to be better, doesn’t it?_

_So many children are being evacuated from London, and I only wish I could be absented from here!  As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to enlist, and see more of the world than dull Hartfield!_

_Mummy says I have to go to university first, and that I’ll understand when I’m older._

_And none of this helps with my violin!  My fingers itch to play… Write me back soon, with some of your puzzles.  Maybe then I won’t die of boredom before I see you again._

_You haven't forgotten about me, have you?  Mummy says you’ve probably been dreadfully, boringly busy with work, and that you’d be happy to receive a letter from me.  I think you’re just being lazy, or maybe you’ve found some people that are more interesting than me._

_They won’t be, you know. Even if they seem like it at first, they’ll still be goldfish in the end!  Just like all the rest. Your time would be better spent writing me letters, or finding a way to come home early for Christmas._

_Soon I’ll be away to university, and then I won’t have the time to write you, either. So you should enjoy the opportunity while you have it.  I’ve decided to read for the sciences, which should come as a surprise to nobody! Yet Mummy and Father still seem to think I’m going to become a mad scientist._

_All because of a little incident with Methylene blue, and Mummy’s bridge club. You’d think she’d be more careful when I’d been doing experiments!_

_Obviously you need to come home, it’s dull as tombs here, and I’m sure it is there, too.  Even if you won’t tell me where ‘there’ is._

_Yours always (is that really how people end their letters?  I have no intention of being yours, but you can be mine, instead.)_

_Lock_

 

It was an extravagant luxury in a time when people had very little.  But it wasn’t as though Mycroft were commissioning the instrument-- just rescuing it from a life of dust beneath a dullard’s bed.  At least, until the next time Barnes was losing at cards, and offered it in place of a wager.  And then who could say which clumsy hands it would fall into?

Mycroft knew what it was to miss the feel of music under his fingers.  How long had it been since he’d pressed the black and white keys of his piano at home?  How long since he had traded that simple joy for the click and strike of lettered typewriter keys?

And Sherlock would love it… Mycroft knew how his face would light up, his mouth curved at the corners only a little.  Hiding his delight because Sherlock never wore anything openly on his face anymore. But he would smile, and he would be happy.  

Mycroft could do that for him.  

So there had never been any real doubt that he was going to play.  And that he was going to win. Because it would be worth it, to see the surprise on his brother's face.  

Mycroft’s chair squeaked as he pulled it away from the table, and motioned to be dealt into the hand.    

A genuine Stradivarius...  Sherlock was going to be thrilled.


	8. December 1941.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love this country, but by God, Mycroft, you’re my nephew...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This morning I woke up to more snow (more! It's nearly May, for goodness sake!) So it looks like today is definitely going to be a writing day!

**December 1941.**

_“I love this country, but by God, Mycroft, you’re my nephew, and we need your brains here working for us.  Not dashed all over the inside of your helmet… It’s all well and good for your classmates to enlist, they don’t use the brains God gave them.  But you’re a Holmes, and British Intelligence needs more men like you.”_

Rudyard Holmes had looked grave that day, Mycroft remembered.  The idolized figure of his childhood; and Mycroft always pictured his stout frame cinched in tight, and his masculine lines softened with taffeta and tulle.  But that day he’d been rigid and severe in black herringbone wool, and his curls-- which had skipped his brother, and carried right on to Sherlock and Mycroft-- had been slicked back from his forehead.

Their uncle would never again sweep Sherlock up and dance him around the sitting room, ruddy cheeked and laughing, the trailing ends of a moth eaten boa trailing after them.

He would never argue with his brother over the Euchre table, their hands moving over the cards with quick, practiced gestures.  

And he would never see the end of the fighting.

It was that day Mycroft had realized just how dire this war could ultimately be.

Mycroft’s fingers felt stiff and numb as he leaned against the wall of Hut 6, his shoulders hunched against the bitter December wind.  He wasn’t entirely sure how late it was, but the worn book of matches in his pocket was more interesting than the scuffed watch. The chain had broken the week before, and he hadn’t been able to find a suitable replacement yet.

For now, it worked; but he made a mental note to hunt down a new chain the next time he was in Milton Keynes.

At this hour, Bletchley was lit by toxic orange street lamps; even in the middle of the night, people were to-ing and fro-ing, carrying stacks of captured communications from hut to hut.   _One day_ , he thought to himself, as he cupped his hand carefully around the end of his cigarette, _We’ll find a way to decode the things en masse, instead of picking them apart, one bloody letter at a time._

“Ah, Holmes… Miserable evening out, isn’t it?”  

Director Marten’s voice was low and gravely, with a friendly slant of the West Country about it.  He was also more than a head taller than Mycroft, a proper giant of a man, with broad shoulders that blocked out the wind and let him finally light his cigarette.  

“It’s certainly cold, sir.”  Mycroft agreed, and took a long, grateful drag of the burning smoke.  Sometimes he almost envied his year mates from Cambridge; most of them had enlisted, and there was a simplicity in their work.  Go where they were told. And point the dangerous end at the enemy.

 _Almost_.

The work he was doing here would never earn him medals or honor; it was quiet work.  Secret work. And Mycroft wasn’t searching for accolades.

“So, Holmes, I heard you qualified to go back home for the holidays.  But here you are, Christmas night-- well, I supposed it’s Boxing Day morning by now, wouldn’t you say?-- And still here.”  

The old man never missed a trick, and Mycroft had no trouble understanding what his uncle had seen in him.  They’d been a pair of contemporaries after the first war, and thick as thieves in a way that Rudy’s elder brother-- Mycroft’s own father, Siger-- had never approved of.

Which was probably why he was standing there, making small talk with him.  Mycroft knew he was being felt out, and endeavoured to stand just a little straighter.  “Yes, sir, that’s right. I’ll take my leave for the first week of January, instead.”

“Pretty girl waiting for you back in Sussex, I suppose?”

Mycroft bit the back of his tongue, and briskly flicked the twisted end of his cigarette with his thumbnail, “Nothing like that, sir.  It’s my brother’s birthday, and I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m not there.” The smile he allowed himself was brief, barely a quirk of his mouth; a sheepish expression, for all he didn’t feel embarrassed in the slightest.

“Ah, yes, yes, that’s right!  William, wasn’t it? Your uncle always spoke so warmly of you both.  He was a good man, your Uncle Rudyard-- pity he’s gone. We could always use more of that Holmes wit around here.  What’s your brother now, now? Thirteen?”

“He’ll be sixteen, sir.”   _And a few more years before you can try to recruit him,_ he added to himself, _So don’t be getting any bright ideas where he’s concerned.  The service is just going to have to get by with one of us._

“Does he have your mind, my boy?  I could do with a few more of you!  I’ve heard good things from your director; they have you working on that blasted transmission out of Munich, don’t they?”

As if he didn’t know.

“Yes, sir, that’s right.  And he’ll be starting university in the fall, as I did.”

“Another Holmes to haunt the hallowed halls of Cambridge, your parents must be very proud.”

“I’m certain they are, sir.”  

“Well, you send them my best wishes, and tell your brother congratulations.  I should be shoving off, though; they want me back in London in the morning. Evening, Holmes.”

“Good evening, sir.”

From behind, Mycroft watched the older man continue on down the path, his steps turned slightly towards the motor pool.   _He’ll borrow the Phaeton, because he thinks it makes him look more powerful.  A meeting in London means he’s going to see Mr. Churchill._

_He’s carrying his case with the extra locks… Bringing our translated intelligence reports to the Home Office._

Mycroft smirked to himself, and the paper of his cigarette crackled faintly when he inhaled. He was running low, he’d have to make a stop at the vending machine at the end of his shift.

From the corner of his eye, Mycroft watched the sleek Phaeton angle towards the gates, and chalked up another mental win.

_If only encoded transmissions were as easily deduced as people._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The Buick Phaeton was a 4 door convertible, named after the very fast phaeton carriages. Very flash!


	9. January 1942.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mycroft? I thought that was you! It’s the ginger hair, dead giveaway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another two-chapter day, I'm really feeling on a roll with this fic!

**January 1942.**

“Mycroft?  I thought that was you!  It’s the ginger hair, dead giveaway.”  

In only a handful of words, Mycroft felt like a teenager again.  Looking back, he slowed his steps, and took in the tall, dark haired man jogging down the icy sideway to catch up to him.  He looked good, the edges of his military tans peeking out from the collar of his jacket, and his hat tilted at a rakish angle that suited him.

Beneath his gloves, Mycroft could remember the calloused, gentle hands, and wondered how his wedding band would look against the solid knuckles.

“Gregory… Goodness. It’s been years.  I thought you’d been stationed in... Libya, was it?”  

Libya.  After his regiment had nearly been destroyed in France.  And Mycroft had felt sucker punched with relief when he heard that Greg had survived.

Even the sound of his laugh was the same, loud and easy, it slid through Mycroft’s veins and warmed him from the inside.  In the back of his mind, Mycroft only hoped his flushed cheeks could be blamed on the bitter wind. As if he hadn’t seen him blushing before!  

But a man had to keep a little of his pride.  

Even so, Mycroft found himself smiling back at him, the corners of his mouth curving up of their own volition.  It was good to see him-- healthy and whole, and with the same essential, wholesome Gregness that had so thoroughly captured his attention when they were younger.

“Have been, but I’m being reassigned.  So I’ve got a few days leave before I deploy for Italy.  Looking forward to it! I think I’ve had my fill of sand for a lifetime!  But what are you doing out here in Sussex? I figured you’d be running this gong show by now.”

“Not quite yet, I’m afraid.  Mr. Churchill is doing a fine job without my help.”  Mycroft demurred. And for a moment, it seemed like Greg was going to reach out to him; his leather gloved fingers uncurling with a self conscious stretch.  “I’m here for my brother’s birthday. Just for the night.”

Maybe Greg felt it, too.  That nebulous sense of _maybe_ that always seemed to exist between them.  The memory of their few fumbling, sweet kisses; and the potential of it all crushed by Greg’s enlistment.  Basic training at Sandhurst, and then deployment to France. To say nothing of…

“How’s Helen?  She must be so happy to have you home.”

“She’s good!  Brilliant, actually.  We’re just down here seeing her parents.  She’s-- well, we’re--” In Greg’s flushed, smiling pause, Mycroft could read his news, and his pride.  

“Going to be a dad, if you can believe it.  Not sure I can, yet. Rotten timing, of course, but isn’t that usually the way it goes with me?”   

For all their history, it was easy to be happy for him.  Greg looked delighted, and the years had been uncommonly kind to him.

They’d both moved on, and it was for the best.

“Congratulations.  Honestly, Gregory, you’re going to be a wonderful father.  And give Helen my love, and congratulations as well.”

But even now, Mycroft’s fingers itched to brush the snowflakes from Greg’s dark hair.  Just once. Just to touch, and know that he was safe. To see if he was still as warm as he had been, the night he’d pressed Mycroft against the back garden wall, and kissed the nervous, token protests from his lips.

“I will… But you should write her yourself.  She’d love to know how you’re getting on…” Greg shifted his weight, and scratched the back of his neck self consciously, “Anyway, Sherlock, yeah?  Bet he doesn’t remember me. Don’t tell me how old he is-- I’m enjoying a little bit of not feeling old!”

“Speaking of Sherlock, I should be hurrying along.  He’s probably impatiently waiting. He woke up this morning with a ravenous craving for a Chelsea bun, of all things, so I promised I’d take him out.  He wanted to stop at the music shop to pick up new strings for his violin, so I said I’d meet him at the cafe.”

“Yeah, best catch up to him, then…  Mycroft, it’s--” Greg’s voice trailed off, and for a moment, his gaze dropped to Mycroft’s gloved hands.   _Maybe if things had been different_ , but there was still the war, and Helen, and both of them only here for an instant, before they were carried off again.  

Greater forces controlled their lives, for the moment.

For the foreseeable future.

“It was good to see you, too.”

In the awkward push-pull lull both men searched for the right words to bridge the silence of the last few years.  

“I’ll look you up when I get back home.  Damn war can’t go on much longer now. We’ll grab a pint.”

They wouldn’t, but Mycroft nodded in agreement, and offered Greg a half smile as they both continued on their way.  

Of course, Sherlock saw.  From the cafe window, he watched his brother and the vaguely familiar man; he deduced their former affection in the lines of their bodies, and the lingering glances they stole when the other wasn’t looking.

After that, it was only a matter of waiting for their parents to go to sleep that night, before he confronted him.

And, distracted by the chance meeting, Mycroft hardly noticed his brother’s pensive quiet.

So that night, with his half-formed refusal running roughshod through his mind, and spurred by a scalding feeling he didn’t entirely understand, (Mycroft was _his brother_ , no other man had a right to him.  He was spoken for!) Sherlock planted himself at the end of Mycroft’s bed, and crossed his arms.

“You can’t be, it’s illegal!  You’re going to be arrested and-”

“It’s illegal to _act_ on it, Sherlock.  Which I have no intention of doing.  Without that evidence, it’s their word against mine.  It’s the action that’s the crime, not the thought.” Mycroft countered quietly, his head bent over some papers on his desk.  

He didn’t have to ask what Sherlock was referring to, it was written starkly in the mottled, angry flush escaping down his throat, and the tense-to-vibrating set of his shoulders.  It was the familiar, thwarted rage unique to Sherlock being denied… Well, anything.

“But you want do.”  

Sherlock always been perceptive.  

 _Did he?_  Mycroft mused. _Of course._  He was a homosexual; which was a sickness of the brain, not of the body.  Yes, his gaze occasionally lingered too long; and _yes_ , sometimes his imagination wandered to passionate, humiliating places when his dorm mate wasn’t in.  

His shame.  His secret to carry.

And his wrongness, which he had almost made peace with.  He would never be like-- love like-- other men. He was sick.  This was simply a fact.

“We’re not having this conversation.  You’re barely sixteen! It’s outrageously improper.”

One eyebrow arched, Sherlock canted his head to the side, his whole expression fixed with consideration.  “It’s some _one_ , isn’t it?”  It wasn’t really a question, and he didn’t wait for his brother to offer a stock excuse, “I’m going to university in September, Mycroft. You can’t pretend I’m a little boy, anymore.”

“It’s a moot point-- you will always be my little brother.  And as I have no intention of acting on... This? Then it doesn’t matter who it is.”

“Who _he_ is.”  Sherlock corrected shortly.

“Let it go, Lock.  It’s not important.  And I have my work… I’m really quite content.”

“You should talk to me.  I’m not going to tell anyone.  And what if I’m bent like you? I might be, you know.  I’ve thought about it.”

Mycroft’s stomach flipped, forcing sour bile up the back of his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to care if Sherlock was making things up: what if it was true?  It was one thing for him to bear it; he was older, and had started to make his peace with his deviancy.

 _But Sherlock?_  

It was unthinkable.  Mycroft had seen enough of the world to know what happened to men like him.  No, it had to be a lie. His brother trying to get under his skin, to win the argument.

Nothing more.

There needed to be better for Sherlock.

“No good is going to come of that!  Focus on your work, Lock. Cambridge is nothing like high school, you’ll have more than enough to occupy your mind.  And eventually, I’m certain, you’ll meet a nice girl that will help you forget all about this.”

“But _you_ won’t forget.”  Sherlock’s voice had dropped another octave since he had seen him last; and it rang with sure finality in the confines of his Mycroft’s bedroom.  “It’s not the man you were with today. He’s an old thing. That’s nostalgia, but he isn’t the one you’ve been pining over. Is it someone you work with at the radio factory?”

“It’s none of your business, Lock.  And I’m hardly _pining_ for anyone.  Can we kindly drop the subject?”

“Tell me.  I want to understand.”

It was Mycroft’s kryptonite, and he knew it.  Big brother had never denied him answers when he needed them.  The world was convinced that Sherlock Holmes was too young to understand, and Mycroft had always been his staunchest supporter.

As he expected, Mycroft huffed a sigh of defeat and half turned to face his brother, “What do you want to know?  And yes, I work with him. Or rather, he works in a different department, but the same facility.”

“Which isn’t actually a radio factory.”

“ _That,_ brother mine, is out of your text, and none of your business.  You know I won’t answer questions about my work.”

Sherlock had the good grace to look just a little sheepish, but it only lasted as long as his next pressing query, “Is he smart?”

“Mm, well, I’m not likely to be interested in a goldfish, am I?”  Mycroft’s smile softened, just for his brother, and Sherlock allowed himself to be just a little mollified.

“Smart like _us?_ ”

“I haven’t hooked him up to an Electroencephalograph, Lock.  But… Probably, yes. I’d say so. Brilliant, in fact.” Rising from his desk, Mycroft tucked his papers away in his briefcase; the one he’d started carrying early that year, and which Sherlock was mostly convinced had a secret compartment.

Only, he hadn’t been able to find it.  Yet.

“And what if he feels the same way about you?”

Mycroft scoffed, the dismissive sound whistling faintly when he rested his steepled fingers against his lips.  The _what if_ made his chest ache, stirring things to the surface that he had no time for.  Bletchley wasn’t like the rest of the world, and he… Oh _he_ … Would never look twice at someone like Mycroft.  

Bletchle ruled-- and was ruled-- by the Work.  And it was everything.

But Mycroft knew what Sherlock was angling for-- a hope.  A fairytale, with exceptions for the rules that hurt.

He was so young.  And Mycroft wanted so very badly to tell him that it was possible.  

But they had never made a habit of lying to one another.  

With a slow ache, Mycroft looked away from his brother. Outside, the heavy cloud cover was starting to break up, and the snow had stopped, promising something like a clear day tomorrow.  Good weather, for driving back north.

“Then it would be a tragedy, and change nothing.  For both our sakes, I hope he doesn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is enjoying this! Come sneak into the comments and chat Holmes and history with me, it'll be a good time! ❤️


	10. May 1942.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mycroft, it’s your brother..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter to help us all get over the midweek blahs!

**May 1942.**

_ “Mycroft, it’s your brother.  He was supposed to be going to Cambridge today, he said he had a meeting with a professor there.  Something to be settled before the end of the year. We should have gone with him… But he was so determined to go alone!  And he’s going to be there alone in September, so this seemed... Only he never arrived. And we’ve called the university, and they have no record of him scheduling a meeting with anyone…” _

Fear tasted as sour and metallic as the receiver of the phone, clenched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles had whitened under the strain.  His sixteen-year-old brother was out there, alone, and God only knew where. 

Already the sun had sank below the high Bletchley fence, and the sky was streaked with the saffron and vermillion of sunset.  But Mycroft had no eye for the beautiful evening. His heart thudded painfully in the tight grip of his chest, and there was no stopping the deluge of terrible images that flickered behind his eyelids.

God, he could be anywhere!  It was a hundred miles from Bletchley to Hartfield, and by the time Mycroft reached there… 

What if he was hurt?  

The idiot boy!  Didn’t he know there was a war going on?!  People were dying, and he chose that moment to vanish!

Where could you even start looking for one rebellious sixteen year old?  

Mycroft knew he had to pull himself together-- panicking would help nothing, and it wouldn’t get Sherlock found any faster. He wasn’t a baby anymore, as he was so fond of reminding Mycroft.  And yet, he couldn’t forget the tiny hand that had gripped his when they were small. Holding onto Mycroft for dear life, because he was  _ safe _ .

With shaking hands, Mycroft fumbled a cigarette from the case in his pocket, his fingers damp with fear sweat and skittering on the clasp.  It was a minor miracle that he managed to light it at all, and the steady burn of the smoke at the back of his throat was a tangible distraction.  

Right.  

_ Think, Mycroft.  You know him better than anyone.  Where would he go? _

Inhaling deeply, the cigarette paper crackling, Mycroft leaned against the wall of the hut and waited for the first hit of nicotine dizziness to fade.  He needed a car. If Sherlock had boarded the train-- and he had no doubt that he had-- there would be a record of it.

That meant going into town.

Where would he be going?  London? Sherlock had always loved the city-- they both had-- but surely that wasn’t worth vanishing for!  

It wasn’t a plan, but it was a-

“Mycroft!”

For a long moment, Mycroft had no idea how to process the sight right in front of his eyes, as he rounded the corner of the hut.  Framed by the guard posts-- and four very angry guards-- was Sherlock.

Just standing there, wide eyed, his wild curls plastered to his temples and forehead with sweat, and six inches of road dust at the cuffs of his trousers.  “Mycroft!” He yelled again, and waved his skinny arms to attract his brother’s attention.

As if Mycroft could look at anything else!

“Sherlock?   _ Sherlock?! _ ”

It would have been a humiliating display if he hadn’t been so relieved.  Mycroft’s head spun as he ran for the gates, unsure if he was going to hug his brother or thrash him.  Heedless of the small crowd; some surprised, and some bemused; Mycroft darted between the guards.

“Sir, is this-”

“Is my little brother- God Sherlock!  You scared me half to-- what were you thinking?!”  Mycroft could feel the tears in the corners of his eyes as he dragged his brother against his chest, and buried his face in his sticky black curls.  Sherlock was hot and breathing hard in his embrace, smelling of travel and dust and man; and his skinny arms were stronger than Mycroft remembered when he hugged him just as tightly back.

“I’m  _ fine _ , Myc.  Don’t squeeze!”

“Sir, he’s a civilian and can’t be-”

“Be glad I’m only squeezing you, otherwise I’d be beating you within an inch of your life!  Don’t you ever do anything like this again, do you hear me?  _ Never! _ ”  Scarcely pulling away, Mycroft cupped his brother’s cheeks in his hands, and forced him to meet his gaze.  He needed to see with his own eyes that he was unharmed-- otherwise the images behind his eyelids, of Sherlock dead, or worse, would never leave him be.

“You wouldn’t tell me where you’ve been, and-”

“I couldn’t!  Lock, I swear, I would tell you if I could, but-”

“ _ Sir _ , he really can’t be here!”  The guard, at the end of his tether, reached in to grip Mycroft’s shoulder, his fingers digging sharply into the lean muscle, “This is authorized personnel only.  You’re going to have to take him to--”

“Get your hands off him!- “

“Now now, I don’t know if we need all of that high handedness, officer… Not when young Mr. Holmes has come to so much trouble to find his brother.”

Director Marten’s car was a gleaming affair in gloss black, so clean it reflected the colours over head like a dark mirror.  With a mild expression that made Mycroft’s nerves ratchet higher, he arched an eyebrow at the brothers. He didn’t even bother to shut off the engine, and purred as a counterpoint to the raised voices.

“William Sherlock Scott Holmes…”  Marten recited, his voice moderated and measured, like he was reading the name from the top of a file.  

Something about that made Mycroft tense guardedly, and his arm tightened around Sherlock’s shoulder.  It was very possible the Director did have a file on his baby brother, and the thought made Mycroft sick.

“It seems as though you’re living up to your family’s reputation for brilliance.  Of course, you shouldn’t be wandering around without the proper clearance, and scaring your family half out of their wits… Tsk.”

For the first time, Sherlock seemed to realize just what sort of trouble he was in.  The Director’s neat, warm voice was punctuated with a click of his tongue. A too-knowing thing, that made Sherlock want to press in closer to his brother’s side for protection.

Mycroft had been here long enough to know the look of a shark.  And Director Martens’, for all his affability, was most certainly a shark.

“And I’m going to take him to town right now, sir.  My mother is, as you said, worried sick. And Sherlock needs to be getting home.”

_ Don’t you dare look at him like that, you bastard.  He’s only sixteen. And he’s going to go to university, and stay as far from this bloody war as I can keep him.   _

_ … Please God, let this war be over before Sherlock turns eighteen. _

Whatever the Director saw on Mycroft’s face, it seemed to amuse him more than anything.  And with a shallow smirk, he bid them good evening and continued on into the compound. 

“Come on, Lock.  We’ve got to get you home.”

The walk into town was quiet, with time measured by the deepening dark, and the sound of their footsteps on the dirt side of the road.  There was nobody to see the way Mycroft’s arm stayed tight about his brother’s shoulders, or the way Sherlock clung to his side. 

“It’s not a radio factory.”  Sherlock murmured finally. He was growing so fast, his head reaching Mycroft’s chin; and soon, he would be too tall to hold like this.  

In truth, he already was.  His shoulders were broad under Mycroft’s arm, and the voice that addressed him had finally stopped crackling.  The low, rich baritone was something new, the timbre settling in Mycroft’s mind with a warm weight that he tried not to dwell on.

It was probably just relief that he was alive.  A chemical quirk of the adrenaline leaving his bloodstream.

“No.”  He sighed, because there was no point concealing that anymore.

“You’re not a soldier.  Mummy and Father would know if you enlisted.  So you’re doing something else. Something dangerous, and secret.”

“It’s enough, Sherlock.  I can’t talk about this.”

“Are you in danger?”

Mycroft stopped at the side of the still road, and smoothed his hand over Sherlock’s disheveled curls.  He could almost look Mycroft in the eye now, and in the half light his eyes were disconcertingly bright.

The irony wasn’t lost on him!  His parents had suspected he was still working for the government; but neither of them had asked.  They worried about Sherlock, and his future, and his safety.

It was the way it should be, Mycroft though.  But he’d never taken into consideration what would happen if Sherlock grew up, and worried about  _ him _ .  Now it had happened, and Mycroft wasn’t sure how he felt about it.  

Instead, he squeezed his hand around Sherlock’s shoulder, and pressed their sides warmly together.  

“Everything is dangerous right now, brother mine.  But I’ll be careful. And I will always come home to you.  I swear it.”


	11. June 1943.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft had never had much of a green thumb.

**June 1943.**

Mycroft had never had much of a green thumb, and it was hard for him to imagine how the long rows of tilled earth could transform-- with some seeds, and a little water-- into a garden.  And yet, he could see the small, feathery tops of the carrots, the vividly orange flowers that would turn into courgettes, and the long runners of delicate pea plants… So clearly, there was something in it.

At the start of the war, most of the lawn had been dug up for vegetables, as grass had very little value, beyond being vaguely decorative.  And every extra bit of food helped.

Barred from active service by age and injury, it had become Siger Holmes’ domain-  the steward of the curly kale and broccoli. 

“Come on now, those turnips aren’t going to weed themselves!”

On three days leave from Bletchley, Mycroft had found himself in a pair of his oldest trousers, kneeling between the turnips and the wax beans, his hands already filthy with rich black soil.  It was a hot afternoon, and he could feel the trickles of sweat as they rolled down the back of his neck, and seeped into the collar of his shirt. 

It wasn’t how he’d expected to spend his afternoon-- there was a new novel waiting on his bedside table, eager to be read--  but there was something vaguely satisfying about the sun and the simplicity of it. After months of drowning in codes and ciphers, even Mycroft’s mind needed  a little time to slow, and process. 

Weeding was dull work, but it freed his mind to concentrate on other problems.

Chiefly, the strangely sequenced code they’d intercepted from Italy three days before.  

_ Substitution… pull a weed.   _

_ Transposition… another weed. _

_ Organize them into cells… dirt under his nails, and scattered across his lap. _

“Mycroft.. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.  About your brother.”

One eyebrow raised, Mycroft looked over to his father, who was patiently pulling the weeds from the patch of carrots.  He’d grown thinner since the last time he’d been home; but then, that was nothing new. Siger Holmes had been declining slowly for years; he’d had children late in life, and logically, Mycroft knew he wasn’t a young man anymore.

It didn’t make it any easier to realize that all his hair had turned grey; or that the deft hands that had taught Mycroft to play the piano were now crabbed with arthritis.  Mycroft had taken after his mother’s side of the family; but in Siger’s familiar countenance, he could see the shades of what Sherlock might look like as an old man.

But his voice was still the same.  His father’s voice didn’t waver or crack-- it was conversational, comfortable.  And after a moment to banish the unhappier thoughts, Mycroft nodded for him to continue, “What about Sherlock?”

“He’s going to be eighteen this winter.  Old enough to enlist. Most of the boys in his year already have, and you know your brother… Sherlock the Dragon Slayer won’t sit back and let other people do the fighting.”

“I know, but I’m not certain what you want me to do about that, Father.  He’s going to be an adult, and the country is at war-- I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but if he’s determined, than nothing we say is going to change his mind.”

Slowly, Mycroft twisted another bunch of roots from the soil, feeling the fibrous snap as they gave way.  He didn’t want to play the Devil’s Advocate, but someone had to.

“I’ve seen war, Myc.  And fought so the two of you didn’t have to.”  With a heavy groan, Siger braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself upright, his hip cracking in protest.  “That was supposed to be the end of it, you know. Thought we’d had our fill of bloodshed.”

“It won’t be like that for Sherlock.  You know I’ll do everything in my power to keep him safe.  And for the moment, he’s safe at university; the Germans have scarcely bombed Cambridge, probably hoping we’ll do the same for Heidelberg.”

None of which made it safe, and they both knew it.  But it was a small, factual comfort that Mycroft had pinned close to his heart.  

It had been there for four years.

“I wanted better than this, Myc... For the both of you.  What was the bloody point of it all, if we were only going to end up back here again?”  

In all his life, Mycroft had never heard his father talk about the war, or his own experiences as a young man.  And there were things you simply didn’t ask. He knew his father loved him, and was proud of him; even when he hadn’t known how to express it.

His Uncle Rudy had been good for that, filling in the spaces with the words Siger struggled to speak.  Translating his pride and affection, so neither Sherlock or Mycroft would doubt that they were loved.

But Rudy had been gone for years, and they all felt the lingering void of his absence.

"I have to believe we're doing the right thing, Father.  Otherwise, what's the point of it all?"  People were dying, and Mycroft couldn't stomach the idea that it was all for naught.  The newsreels spoke of glory and bravery, and the country had been taken over by the American troops.  That was what history would remember; not the mud, or the wounded, or the dead.  

It would forget Helen, waiting at home for news of Greg.  And it would forget the men and women who fought with their pens, and their minds, instead of a loaded rifle.

Siger looked back over his shoulder, his gaze resting on his first born with a quiet consideration, "Sometimes I forget you're not a child anymore, Myc.  You've..."  He stopped, and stepped over a bed of short wax beans to gather up the piles of weeds.  "You're a good brother.  I know you'll keep him safe.  I'm proud of you boys."

“I know… We both do.  I’ll ask around, see if there’s a position for him where I work.  It wouldn’t be safe, precisely… But it would be safer.” It was the best, and the only, thing Mycroft could suggest.  And he could look, but there was no assurance that Sherlock would accept.

Director Marten's would be delighted.  

Mycroft felt like the was selling his soul.

Or worse, Sherlock's.

Siger’s hand was broad and warm when he rested it on Mycroft’s shoulder, and the squeeze of his fingers was as resigned as his expression.  “Let’s go in, before your Mummy sends the kids out to find us.”

_ Please God, let the war be over before Sherlock turns 18. _

But the fighting showed no signs of stopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. America joined WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December, 1941.


	12. November 1943.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mr. Holmes, my name is Edmund Withering-Smythe. I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was feeling inspired this morning, so here's another chapter!

**November 1943.**

“Mr. Holmes, my name is Edmund Withering-Smythe.  I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

It was the sort of question that should come from a man in an overcoat, skulking in a dark street corner on a cloudy night.  But the man standing in the door of the hut was blonde, with a round face and pink complexion that looked soft against his light, glencheck suit.  

Even from a distance, Mycroft could see the creases in his trousers from sitting too long-- just in from London, then, given the distance and time of day.  And in a hurry, from the way he shifted his weight restlessly on his left heel. 

He was used to carrying a briefcase, but he’d left it behind today-- probably in the car.  And probably to appear more approachable. Just a routine visit from your local Secret Service agent-- after years at Bletchley, Mycroft knew what he was looking for.

He was the sort of man that was easy to overlook, who could blend into a crowd; not handsome, but not noticeably unattractive.  A gentle sort of face, and an unassuming demeanor.

It didn’t mean anything.  Not when his smile was pinched at the corners, and his gaze rested on Mycroft’s face like he was reading him in return.  

For a moment, all noise in the hut stopped, save for the mechanical whir of the cylinders along the back wall.  People stopped talking, their heads swiveling-- curious-- and Mycroft could feel the heat of a dozen pairs of eyes on the back of his neck.  

The rapid clicking of typewriter keys stopped suddenly, and the silence of their absence was deafening.

_ British Intelligence.  MI5. No. MI6. Which wasn’t supposed to exist, but certainly did. _

_ Why was someone from the big brass looking for Mycroft? _

“Of course, sir.”

Because that’s what you said when the Secret Service showed up at the door, even when your heart had gone to live in your guts.  

Smothering the jab of anxiety in his belly, and detouring to fetch his own jacket, Mycroft followed the gentleman out into the cool November afternoon.  It was sunny, and the sky was the clearest blue; nothing like a dark and stormy night at all.

Unseasonably warm, in fact.  Mycroft had enjoyed the rare heat of it just that morning when he had left his barracks.  Now, his skin prickled with goosebumps under his sleeves.

“Mr. Holmes, you’ve been with us here at Bletchley for some time now.  Two years, I believe?”

“And nine months, sir.  Closer to three years.” Mycroft corrected, and Mr. Withering-Smythe’s mouth curved up affably.  It gave Mycroft the impression that he’d given the right answer.

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.  If Director Martens was a shark, this man was something else entirely. 

Perhaps one of those giant squids that Sherlock had been fascinated by in childhood.

“Of course, of course, very good… And you studied Language and Politics at Cambridge.  Graduated at the top of your class. Most impressive.” Mr. Withering-Smythe was half a head shorter than Mycroft, his hands hidden beneath the heavy fabric of the overcoat he’d draped over his arm.  With a thoughtful hum, they fell into step, in a meandering path that lead away from the huts.

“That’s right, sir.”

“And your German.  It’s fluent?”

“I … Yes.  I speak at a mother tongue level.”   _ Oh God. _

“I’ve been told you have quite the mind for languages, Mr. Holmes.  You speak several, I believe. And we have a job for a man with your particular skills.”

As a young boy, Mycroft had misjudged the ice over the creek near his family home.  At that moment, he had the same feeling of the ice cracking under his feet-- of freezing, holding still, when every instinct screamed at you to run.  

“Thank you, sir.  But my work is--”

Most of the time, Bletchley was an island.  They did their work-- important work,  _ good _ work-- and the Home Office was content to let them continue doing it.  

This felt different.

“I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. Holmes, that despite our best efforts, the fighting continues.  The German war machine is turning out new weaponry at a rate we can’t match. I’ll be blunt with you, Mr. Holmes-- we have a shortage of agents who are able to speak their language fluently enough to go unobserved.  And in desperate times, we must be willing to make difficult decisions for the greater good of England.”

_ Oh God.  Oh God. Oh God. _

The sinking feeling curdled in his belly, and Mycroft found himself nodding dumbly at the shock.  He was no spy! He was a cryptographer. He decoded transmissions, and translated messages--

He did not cross enemy lines, pretending to be Mata Hari!  

With a sick lurch, his heart began to beat again; following a hard, fast tattoo that reverberated behind the shell of his ribs.  

“Sir, with all due respect-- I have no training in espionage.  I’m a translator!”

If Mr. Withering-Smythe heard him, he gave no indication.  

“You should be gone a week.  Ten days at the very most. We have agents in Hamburg that will make contact when you arrive.  Your family will be informed that you’ve been temporarily assigned to do translations in Rome. And, of course, the truth of your assignment must be kept strictly confidential.  I trust you understand the need for security.”

_ Fluently enough to go unobserved.   _

_ Shortage of agents. _

Slowly, Mycroft dragged his clammy hands over the front of his jacket.  “I’ll need to write to my family, sir. I… They’ll suspect something is wrong if I don’t.”

And Sherlock would never forgive him.

_ Sherlock... _

“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes, that’s entirely out of the question.  I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a war on. And we’re in the business of trying to end it.”  His expression hardened, flinty, and Mycroft wondered just how many of those missing agents had been condemned by this man.

“And… If I refuse, sir?”

“This isn’t a request, Mr. Holmes. I could have you reassigned.”

He didn’t need to add the  _ or worse _ , it was implied in the measure and weight of his tone.  And Mycroft had no doubt that he could. Would. Do exactly that.  This wasn’t a man in the habit of making idle threats. With a gallows nod, Mycroft curled his hands into his pockets, and wrapped his fingers around the solid, smooth weight of his cigarette case.

“Of course, sir… I understand.”

“Very good.  We have your papers prepared, and your flight will leave tonight at 0200.  King and country thank you, Mr. Holmes, for your service. Good luck.”

_ Oh God. _


	13. December 1943.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock could feel the vibration of the music seeping up through the polished dance floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! The reception to this fic has been so supportive, and I'm endlessly grateful to all of you!
> 
> There are links for the music mentioned in this chapter in the footnotes, if anyone wants to add a little swing to their day!

**December 1943.**

Sherlock could feel the vibration of the music seeping up through the polished dance floor, the rhythm picked out by the quick strike of hard soled shoes.  He could follow the paths of the spinning couples by the matte smudges their shoes left behind on the polished wood.

He’d never been the biggest fan of the brass, but even his toes tapped out the rhythm of Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing Sing Sing’.  The band wasn’t half bad-- certainly it was a massive step forward from the one they’d hired the week before. With the sharp rise of the drum rhythm in the chorus, Sherlock rapped his fingers against the edge of the bar, picking out the violin fingering against the scarred wood.

“Sherlock, come on!  You can’t sit back here like a bump, come dance!”  Victor’s voice was an octave too loud, even accounting for the music, and it didn’t take someone with Sherlock’s perception to see the warm liquor flush in his cheeks.  “It’s our last night before you go back to Sussex for the hols. Would it kill you to come dance?”

Victor, Sherlock had long since decided, was a prize arsehole.  But he was also one of the few people at Cambridge that had enough grey matter to produce a spark.  Even if it was a very small spark.

They weren’t friends.  Not really. They shared a dorm, and managed not to kill one another--

Victor had been his too-loud, too-laughing gateway into the glittering, Americanized world of swing.  The jazz and the brass, and the noise; the pretty girls in their brightly patterned best.

“I guess that depends on who you want me to dance with.”  Sherlock quipped back, his smirk insouciant as he tipped his chair back on two legs.  He was noticeably younger than most of the men here-- a side effect of starting university so early-- but the dance club had become a familiar hangout.  

And it had only taken a few sly deductions to keep the gorilla of a man at the front door from pressing him for his ID.  Everyone had their secrets, and most of them were an open book to someone as perceptive as Sherlock.

With a boisterous laugh, Victor draped his arm over Sherlock’s shoulders, close enough that he could smell the sweat beneath the bergamot of his cologne.   _Agua Lavanda Puig Eau de Cologne.  He’s determined to convince people that he’s Sinatra._

He’d been through a handful of dance partners that night, so apparently it was working.

“Just one dance.  One little, tiny dance?  For me? If you ask nicely, I’ll even see if the band will play Moonlight Serenade for us.”

“You think you’re hilarious… Unfortunately, nobody else does.”

“Well aren’t you in a sour mood!”  

Instead of leaving Sherlock alone, Victor grabbed his hands and pulled him up from his chair; stubbornly ignoring his friend’s hiss of protest.  At the front of the room, the brass were taking a break, conceding the stage to a passable pianist who had launched into ‘Tea For Two’ with more enthusiasm than skill.

 _Mycroft could play better than this with both hands tied behind his back,_ Sherlock groused to himself.  It was hardly going to feel like Christmas at all with his big brother still stationed in Italy!  He’d been gone for what seemed like forever, and Sherlock desperately missed the constant contact of his letters.  

_Speaking of prize arseholes.  He didn’t even write to say he was leaving._

Victor’s expression flickered for an instant when he saw Sherlock’s face start to fall, “He’s going to be fine, you know.  They keep the translators well back from the fighting. He’s probably having a brilliant time while you’re here sulking. In fact!  You were so busy being a grump that you didn’t even notice that redhead over in the corner, making come hither eyes at you.” Smugly, Victor arched an eyebrow; thin, and a shade darker than his slicked brown hair; and squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder firmly.

Sherlock started, and followed the line of Victor’s gaze-- half expecting it to be a joke.  Sometimes it was.

Tonight it wasn’t.  And she was lovely.  

He didn’t recognize her from any of his classes, but that didn’t say much.  In a dress the colour of plums, the redhead leaned against the wall, and bit her lower lip coyly when he finally met her gaze.  Her hair was just the right shade, all auburn and copper under the dance hall lights, and …

“I know that look!  It’s always the redheads with you, isn’t it?  Go ask her to dance! I’m telling you, Holmes, if you don’t?  Then I will. With a body like that… Mmm, I bet she can move!”

“Poor woman.  You’re a pig, Victor.”  But there was no heat in his drawled mockery, and he didn’t bother to pull away from the arm slung companionably around his shoulders.

Most nights he did dance.  He enjoyed the quick steps and the careless speed of it all; the adrenaline rush of the music, and the way his partners clutched at him as they spun.  They were beautiful, laughing in his arms and following his lead; a swirl of skirts and the thud of their shoes.

When they were breathless, he didn’t have to listen to them talk.  

The combination of good music and enough liquor, he’d found, made even the most boring people a little more tolerable.

Tonight, he was planted by the bar, with a slowly growing collection of empty glasses.

“Don’t be a prat.  I’m going to find you a nice girl eventually.  One that even the great Sherlock Holmes would be tempted by!”

Sherlock smirked to himself, but he didn’t push Victor away when he propped his chin on his shoulder from behind.  His breath smelled of Pimm’s, and it was sticky warm against the side of his neck, still panting hard from dancing.

The familiar tug in Sherlock’s belly had nothing to do with the pretty girl batting her eyelashes from beneath the swaths of pink and purple bunting.

“You know, Holmes, I’m starting to think we should be finding you a Victor, instead of a Victoria.”  He drawled, voice pitched low and just a shade closer to flirtatious. It made Sherlock’s stomach tense further, hot and low, and his breath huffed out just a bit too sharply.

“I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a joke, or an invitation.”  Sherlock volleyed back, but it was growing more difficult to focus on the words when Victor’s hands had settled easily on his waist, searing through the thin fabric of his shirt.  For an instant, Sherlock wished he hadn’t discarded his jacket, but it was hot in the hall.

The huff of laughter against the back of his neck made his skin break out in goosebumps.

“We wouldn’t be the first lads to spend a little extra quality time with our dorm mate.  And I keep saying I need to find a way to shut you up.”

Nobody else in the room noticed the way Victor pressed in against his back, but Sherlock could feel the hard prod of his erection against the base of his spine.  It was a terrible idea-- they could hardly get along on the best of days. But the music was loud, and the bartender had been more than liberal with the gin; it flowed through his veins with a sour brightness that made everything in the world-- Trevor included-- more bearable.

It was much more tempting to focus on the light fingers curling against his belt, the pad of Victor's thumb escaping beneath the leather to settle in the hollow of his hip boldly.

He wasn’t Mycroft-

_Bastard.  Leaving me behind._

But he was handsome, and almost smart.  And he wanted Sherlock.

“What do you say, Holmes?  The band’s rubbish tonight, anyway.”  The way he pitched his voice, an octave lower and smooth against his neck, brought Sherlock up aching against the seam of his trousers.  Lazily, Trevor leaned back just a little-- his hips still slotted tight against Sherlock’s behind-- and fished his case of cigarettes from his pocket.

He didn’t release him as he struck the match, and the scent of his cologne was briefly overshadowed by acrid sulfur and the low, rich smoulder of fresh tobacco.  The smoke made him lightheaded when Victor brought the french cut to his lips, and Sherlock inhaled deeply.

 _Bugger it, why not?…_ Besides, Victor was a medical student, and Sherlock had spent more than a few distracted evenings watching his deft hands practice sutures and knots.  He had beautiful hands. And here was his chance to find out if they would feel just as sure on his body.

Victor wasn’t the man he wanted.  But he was the man that was here. Hard.  And clearly as intrigued by the idea as Sherlock was.

“Might as well.”  He stated, and swallowed down the last of his drink, “I have nothing better to do tonight.  And it could be an interesting experiment.”

“What a gentleman.  Home?”

"Home."

The swing beat of the music was still echoing in Sherlock’s brain as he nodded, and followed Victor--  laughing, and alight with expectation-- out into the Cambridge night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing" is one of those Big Band era songs that always makes me tap my feet!  
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2S1I_ien6A)
> 
> 2\. And you can check out Art Tatum's "Tea for Two" at  
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxadblDT6zI)
> 
> 3\. Agua Lavanda Puig Eau de Cologne was launched in 1940, and favoured by Frank Sinatra. The top notes are bergamot, lavender and rosemary; middle notes are nutmeg and geranium; and the base notes are cedar, oak moss, musk and tonka bean.


	14. January 1944.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was warm, wonderfully warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I hope you're having a fabulous weekend!
> 
> So, this fic has officially had the rating bumped up. Colour me a nervous El, because this is definitely out of my usual comfort zone. So, crossing my fingers that it's alright! 💕 Oh these muses and their demands! (But we love them anyway!)

**January 1944.**

He was warm, _oh_ , wonderfully warm.  Bathed in the late morning sunshine, Sherlock stretched languorously into the tangled sheets of his bed, letting the heavy weight of worn cotton pull at his sprawled arms and legs.  The sheets were so much softer than his bedding at Cambridge, the knap of the fabric beaten soft by years of tossing, turning bodies, and Sherlock relished in the simple pleasure of their smoothness on his skin.

He was home, and the walls of Musgrave House were thick and solid.  Mother Nature could rail against those ancient bricks with all her might, and he would still be warm and snug inside.  He had always felt safe here, in his room with the door closed; his books on the shelves, his pictures on the walls. There was no Victor here to interrupt him, no school bell clanging for his attention.

Down below, he could hear the sounds of Molly and Philip’s voices, and the rattling clink of the breakfast dishes.  No running footsteps of late students, or the deafening din of the cafeteria… Oh, he would have to get up eventually, but for the moment?  Sherlock arched his back up from the body warmed mattress, and rolled his shoulders into the misshapen lumps of his pillows.

For now, he thoroughly intended to enjoy every moment of a luxuriously lazy morning.

“Are you going to spend all day in bed, brother mine?  Perhaps turning eighteen has come with some terrible sleeping sickness?”  Mycroft’s voice drawled from the end of the bed, and Sherlock grinned unabashedly.  The rich, teasing timbre of it pooled in his belly and sparked hotly through his veins, every bemused syllable feeling tangible on his bare skin.

Sherlock had always run warm, and he’d decided that pajamas were highly overrated.  They tangled and bunched, and generally got in the way.

“Maybe I was waiting for you.”  He volleyed back, and tried to smother a breathy hitch in his voice when Mycroft’s fingertips ghosted across the sole of his foot.  “I had nothing... That _tickles!  Mycroft!_  Nothing better to do until you finally came home.”

There was no apology, just the warmth of his brother’s lips against the tender inside of his ankle.  With unhurried affection, making up for the months of lost time, Mycroft trailed idle kisses along the lean path of Sherlock’s legs; reacquainting himself with the way his little brother twitched when he curled his fingers against the hollow of his knee, or moaned when he sucked brief, pink marks on the inside of his spread thighs.

It was a glorious tease, his stubbled cheek rasping over Sherlock’s skin and bringing him out in goosebumps.  A slow, patient morning communion.

Mycroft wasn’t tense and protesting that they shouldn’t do this.  

He wasn’t pulling away.

Eyes closed, Sherlock could drown in his touches.

“You should let me go back north with you… I could work with you during the day, and steal your blankets at night.  Nobody would find it strange if you shared a room with your brother, and we could wake like this every morning.” Sherlock’s voice was barely a murmur, lisped across sleep-slack lips.  But he could feel the curve of Mycroft’s mouth against his hollow of his hip bone, and the way his fingers tightened protective-- possessive-- on his thighs.

It was as good-- no, _better_.  Tangible and firm, his long fingers anchoring them together, and the heat of his breath so very, very close to where Sherlock ached for him-- so much better than bland, ephemeral words and promises.

“Are you certain?  Sherlock, you’re so young--”

“I’m eighteen.  An adult.”

“Since yesterday.  I haven’t forgotten.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes at his own imagination; even in a perfectly lovely fantasy, Mycroft was determined to be the responsible older brother.  “If you were here to do this properly, I wouldn’t have to resort to… _oh, bloody…_   _Myc…_ ”  

His hips jerked as he slid his hand beneath the tangled sheets.  They’d trapped his body heat, and made his fingers feel colder when he curled them around his weeping cock; already dripping a clear, sticky pool where it strained against his stomach.  “You should be here. The image in my Mind Palace isn’t doing you justice anymore.”

It was a fantasy that had been taken out and played, replayed-- loved and loved and loved-- so many times that the spark had begun to fade. He wanted to scrub away the clean scent of soap on his sheets, and replace it with sex and sweat, and the grapefruit and cedar of Mycroft’s cologne.  

But that bottle was in his brother’s bedroom, so Sherlock settled for gripping himself a little more tightly, the pad of his thumb smearing over the head.  It made his hips jump instinctively, sharp and quick, in search of friction.

If he opened his eyes, Sherlock knew he would see the fading pink love bites that Victor-- _smug bastard, thinking he had any right to mark what wasn’t his_ \-- had scattered over his chest and thighs.  But this was his fantasy, and Sherlock had no desire for those reminders.

He’d tried to pretend them were from his brother, the lingering remains of his need printed in bruise red on his skin.  But the placement of the fingers as all wrong, and Sherlock had been forced to give up the whole idea as completely unsatisfying.

It was more of a reminder of what he was missing.

 _Who he was missing_.  

_No distractions!  Is that really what you want to be thinking about at this moment?_

In retaliation, he pinched the outside of his thigh, and imagined that it was his brother, recalling his attention.  

“I believe we were in the middle of something, brother mine…”

Their hands were the same shape; long fingered and elegant; but Mycroft had always been dominant left.  Impatiently, Sherlock switched hands and stroked himself again. It felt different, less dextrous as he adjusted his grip and rocked his hips demandingly into his own fist.

“ _Yes_ … Like… _Just_ like that…”  Eyes squeezed tight, Sherlock could picture Mycroft’s fingers around him, and now the physical sensation mirrored the fantasy.  Under his breath, he muttered encouragements to his imaginary lover, because even in his dreams, Sherlock supposed his brother would need to be reminded that this was alright.

That he wasn’t a child, and he had wanted this-- wanted him, and only him-- to the point of distraction and tight, tense arousal-- for as long as he could remember.

_“You should talk to me.  I’m not going to tell anyone.  And what if I’m bent like you? I might be, you know.  I’ve thought about it.”_

Had thought about him.  

They’d been childish fantasies; rushed and fumbling, and Sherlock could remember the vibrations against his back when he’d slammed his bedroom door too hard, and leaned against it.

He’d been riddled with jealousy-- some man, some _smart_ man at his brother’s work had captured his attention. And it had been so much better when Sherlock had thought it was just that tall, greyish man…  Graham… George… Jim? No… A G-name, and he didn’t care to remember it. Because he had been in the past, and this man at Bletchley was a different sort of threat.  A present one.  

Someone that threatened, with their very existence, to take his Mycroft away.

He’d fumbled with his belt and flies, trousers loose on his hips, and despised the other men in his brother’s life.  None of them could ever understand Mycroft the way he did. They were made from the same cells; the same blood ran in their veins.  He was _his_ brother, made for him, and Sherlock would not share him with these pawing, fumbling fools.

And he could remember the burning strip of his hand over his cock, impatient and driven until he spilled over his own socks, and stained the front of his trousers.

_I have no intention of being yours, but you can be mine, instead._

_Mine, mine mine._

“Yours, always yours, Lock.”  Mycroft murmured against his ear, “Only yours.”

Sherlock bit his tongue as his climax broke over him, piercing the skin with the copper tang of blood.  He wanted to howl, so he threw his free arm across his face to smother the sounds of his release--

The last thing he needed was for his Mummy to think he was in pain, and to come check on him.  Again.

_Mine, mine… My Mycroft... My brother…_

“Myc!”  Sherlock gasped against the meat of his arm, and felt the hot, panting dampness of his own breath.  It always ended this way, his brother’s name on his lips as he rutted into his own slick hand. It was when the tidy edges of his fantasies shattered into bright, flickering fragments that darted chaotically behind his tightly squeezed eyelids.

It wasn’t his own hand, it was his brother; gasping and curling his fingers against the wall, leaving sweaty prints behind.  He was perfect and squeezing, and Sherlock could plant his kisses and bruises between the sharp crests of his scapulae, where nobody would ever think to look for them.

Mycroft would shake under his hands as he worked him open, and Sherlock would be the one to take care of him.  He would hold him hard to his chest, and curl his fingers against him from the inside. He’d be able to feel the clutching grasp of his muscles, and the resistance as he pressed his fingers inside of him.  

He could be slow, and patient, and wait until Mycroft was stretched and pleading to be taken.  

Sherlock would be the one to kiss the whimpering moans from his mouth.

With a groan, Sherlock’s teeth caught on his arm, and his back arched hard from the bed.  Mycroft was ginger, he flushed-- _blushed_ \-- so easily, and Sherlock had imagined the pink that would stain his skin under the cinnamon scatter of his freckles so many times that he could recall the image from memory.  

He would flatten his hand, fingers splayed, over the beat of his brother’s heart, and memorize the desperate rhythm of it under his palm.

Mycroft always kept his hair short, but in Sherlock’s fantasies, he’d grown out the loose curls he’d loved as a child; and he could tangle his fingers into the thick, auburn waves until his big brother melted into him, boneless and lips parted in welcome.

Breathing hard, Sherlock collapsed back against his tangled bedding, and wiped his wet fingers on the sheets.  His body hummed with release, the cocktail of adrenaline, norepinephrine, and serotonin making him lazy and content.  

Eventually he would have to open his eyes, and let the fantasy go.  Reality would reassert itself with the sticky film of his release splattered on his belly, and the urgent pressure on his bladder.  But, just for now, Sherlock stretched out along the length of his bed, his bare skin warmed by climax and late morning sunshine.

No, he didn’t have to move quite yet.

When the sleek black car with military plates pulled up outside Musgrave House late that afternoon, Sherlock knew it was his brother.  It couldn’t be anyone else-- not today! A day late for his birthday, but clearly he’d been delayed in coming home from Italy. And what was a day when he hadn’t seen Mycroft in months?!

He’d caught sight of it from his window; the hard topped vehicle, black as a beetle and winding up the drive.  His heart leapt-- after weeks of silence, finally his brother was home!

Of course Mycroft wouldn't miss his eighteenth birthday-- Sherlock had always known that his brother could perform miracles.  There could be no greater gift than to have his Mycroft home where he belonged; safe and safe and _safe_ under the same roof, where Sherlock could see him with his own eyes.  

And there would be no more sending his brother away, that was for certain!  No more of Sherlock lying awake and listening to the distant thunder of the bombs, wishing that Mycroft was there to tell him it would be alright.  No more listening to the radio broadcasts, desperate for any word of the situation in Italy.

Italy!  Twelve hundred miles, and now he was home!

With unfettered joy, Sherlock bolted for the main staircase.  His mother would tell him not to run in the house. That he was nearly grown, and not a little boy anymore-- but how could he be intolerably slow and still when Mycroft was just on the other side of the door?!  

No, he could not.  Would not! He would run, and throw himself into Mycroft’s arms!

Or he would stop, and make sure his brother was safe and unharmed.  He would have sharp words for his absence, and he would not cry, because he was eighteen now-- and far too old for that.

Or both.  Sherlock wasn’t sure which; only that the distance between his room and the front doors had never seemed…

So…

Far.

At the bottom of the staircase, Sherlock’s steps slowed to a terrible stop.

This man was not his brother.

This man with his dour expression, and hat pressed over his heart with hateful pity, this was not his Mycroft.  This bastard ghoul with his sad eyes, who looked over Mummy’s shoulder and fixed Sherlock with a sympathetic look.  This wasn’t right.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t possible.

“We’re so sorry, Mrs. Holmes, but your son has been reported missing in action.  We’ve done all we can, but missing on the other side of enemy lines… Of course, his possessions will be returned to you, once the Home Office has made sure that there is no classified information contained in them.”

The man’s voice was low and grave, and eddies of dry, wind-blown snow escaped through the open door around his feet.  

Sherlock wanted to push forward, passed his mother, so he could slam it closed.  This wasn’t possible, it wasn’t real. There was no way!

_Missing in action._

_Behind enemy lines?_

But Mycroft was supposed to be in Italy.  Far back from the fighting.

He was just a translator!

The world was filled with the most terrible sound.  It choked for air, and suffocated on it’s own wretchedness.  The sound demanded that the man was wrong; his brother was safe.  His brother was coming _home._

And Mummy’s arms were hard around Sherlock as he huddled on the stairs, but she couldn’t hold him tight enough to force the broken pieces back together.  He couldn’t remember deciding to sit down, only that his knees had felt weak and given under him,

Sherlock wanted to scream, but the sound twisted, barbed in his throat.

“He’s not gone, not… He’s not…  He can’t be. He promised he’d always come home.  He promised! And Mycroft wouldn’t lie about that!  It’s a mistake. Someone else. It has to be someone else, because Mycroft isn’t gone.  He’s going to come home, and he’s going to be _fine!_ ”

His mother’s silence was damning.

“He promised he’d always come back for me…”


	15. February 1944.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the radio, the gathered soldiers could hear the sounds of the cheering crowd in Berlin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Before we jump into this chapter, I just wanted to mention that it does contain mentions of Nazism, propaganda, and period-typical nationalism. These are historical views of the time, and don't reflect mine!
> 
> Also, I'm not a native German speaker, so my translations are based on research and Google-fu. If I've made any glaring mistakes, I'm very sorry in advance!

**February 1944.**

Over the radio, the gathered soldiers could hear the sounds of the cheering crowd in Berlin, all gathered to hear the Führer speak.  Their voices blurred together beneath the music of drums and horns that the _Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft_ had piped over the start of broadcast; anything to make their glorious leader’s speech sound more like a celebration.

A festival.  As if such a thing could exist alongside the mass book burnings, and the messages of nationalistic pride.

Sometimes, sitting here with the other men, the air thick with the scent of cigarette smoke, Mycroft felt a twist of deja vu in his chest.  He could have been twenty again, sitting in the Cambridge common room, surrounded by the young men he’d gone to school with.

Listening to the radio at the start of the war, and a thousand miles from here.  

Mycroft no longer felt strange when he stood to attention, like all the other men, when the Führer’s voice came over the radio.  Just as he no longer felt the urge to pluck at the vivid red armband around his bicep; or hesitate to pull on his crisp, black uniform.

For four months, Major Kristian Mueller had been the model German-- if, perhaps, a little too ginger to properly fit the party’s ideal mold.  He had taken orders, and delivered messages, and carefully hoarded his little lies and secrets. A quiet man, who kept his own council, and whose overseers had nothing but praise for.

Kristian’s messages never went missing, and they were never late.  He questioned orders when appropriate-- which was virtually never-- and did his job to the very best of his efficiency and ability.  A bright man… Who wasn’t bright enough to be a threat.

For three months, Mycroft Holmes had ceased to exist.

He hadn’t dared to think in English, much less speak it.  Surrounded by the German war machine, and with their swastika emblazoned on his uniform-- survival had meant adaptation.

Imitation.

“ _ One thing is certain: there can be only one victor in this fight, and this will either be Germany or the Soviet Union! A victory by Germany means the preservation of Europe; a victory by the Soviet Union means its destruction...” _

From his corner of the public room, Mycroft listened to the cheering crowd, and the propaganda.  To their pride, and the stories of their glorious victories. It was news of home, filtered through an enemy lense, and Mycroft had no way to know how much was truth.

All he knew for certain was that his one-week assignment had stretched on far longer.  

It had always been a risk, and Mycroft had accepted than before he left England.  Shortly after his arrival in Hamburg, his contact had been picked up by the Gestapo, and their cell disbanded. The same jackbooted men he was currently standing to be counted with, had come in the night and taken them all away.

Mycroft had no idea what had happened to them, only that his escape route from Germany had gone with them.

Eventually the Home Office would find a way to get him out, he knew that-- had to believe it, because they needed the information he had hidden in the false lid of his suitcase.  It wasn’t sentiment, it was logic-- and they would try to find him, because his information was useful to them. 

It had been over three months, and Mycroft knew it was only a matter of time before someone looked too closely at his papers, or his past.  

_ “That is so very clear that every not completely crazy Englishman should know this quite well. If in spite of this they act as though things could be different, with true British hypocrisy, then this must be attributed to the responsible war criminals in London who no longer see any possibility of escaping their involvement.” _

The radio crackled around the Führer’s raised voice, pitched hard to be heard over the sounds of the crowd.  They loved him, and hung on his every word, with all the pride of a people that knew--  _ knew _ \-- they were going to win the war.  

No matter how dire things seemed, they had hope.

And every evening, Mycroft listened to the radio, desperate for words of home.

“Kristian!  Come for a drink.  You’ve been hiding in your corner for long enough!”  Berger’s voice cut through the post-broadcast music, braying loudly enough to rival the strains of Beethoven.  Mycroft’s fingers curled against the barrel of his pen, and stilled.

Kristian Mueller could not play the piano, but Mycroft could play the 29th Sonata,  _ Hammerklavier _ , from memory.  His fingers flexed, and craved the release of the music. 

But all of that would have to wait, because Kristian was not musically inclined.

“Don’t bother, Berger!  The Major never comes out with us.  He’s too busy pining away for the pretty girl he’s left back in Leipzig, isn’t that right?”

Mycroft…  _ Kristian _ … Looked up from his page, and offered the other men the same half-smile that had become something of a trademark for him, “Perhaps I want to be up and awake for our roll call tomorrow, instead of wishing away a hangover.  Too much beer, too little sleep; that’s why I’m going to be promoted before either of you.”

“Come on, only one drink!  Then we’ll have you back and tucked into your bunk like a good boy.  Even Erich is coming with us!” Berger pressed, laughing. Broad shouldered, and ruddy cheeked with amusement, he clasped his hand on Mycroft’s shoulder companionably, “Your pretty Fräulein will still be there in the morning-- you don’t have to write her every day!”

From the other side of the room, Erich raised his hand in confirmation, and his sheepish smile softened when Mycroft caught his eye.  He was young, barely old enough to enlist. His loose, black curls had been cut short when he joined, and the uneven edges looked soft where they’d escaped his efforts to slick them down.

His presence made Mycroft’s chest ache, thinking of his own dark haired boy back home.  Sherlock would be in university, and every night Mycroft listened for some word of Cambridge.  

He prayed to a God he didn’t believe in, to keep Sherlock safe while he was gone.

“Please Kristian?  Don’t leave me alone with them!  They’ll find some girls, and I’ll have nobody to talk to.  They’ll leave me at the bar, while the girls coo over their uniforms.  Please?”

It was that look Erich had-- soft and hopeful in a way no soldier’s should be.  And it caught behind Mycroft’s ribs like fishhooks, pulling him up out of his seat.  “Yes, alright… One drink. Come on, before Frau Hoffmann decides to close early.”

Erich beamed, and Mycroft felt sick to his stomach.  He wasn’t Sherlock, and Kristian had no little brother.  Erich walked too close to his side, always too close, his warm body pressed to the edge of Mycroft’s personal space.  

_ He is not Sherlock.  And you are going to drive yourself mad with missing him.  This is foolish! _

In the back of the car, Erich’s hand slid across the seat and found Mycroft’s in the dark, his fingers clammy and too-warm with nervousness.   _ I’m afraid of this war,  _ the speaking touch whispered,  _ I’m afraid to die. But you make me feel safe.   Let me be with you. Let us have this. Please. _

His eyes fixed forward, and the rush of blood in his ears drowning out the voices from the front seat, Mycroft didn’t push him away.  For such a young man, Erich’s fingers were calloused and broad; a strong grip that could have hurt. Instead, he cradled Mycroft’s cold hand in his own, and smoothed his thumb across his knuckles.

And it was close, too close-- forever too close, and Mycroft needed him to be someone he could never be.  Someone who was waiting for him back home, and  _ God, Sherlock…   _

He would be eighteen.  And from here, Mycroft couldn’t protect him.  Would he be like Erich? Terrified and clinging to some strange man in the dark?  

Would he ever forgive him for leaving?

_ “Therefore, despite all the devilry by our enemies, this fight will in the end lead to the greatest victory of the German Reich.” _

That night, Erich called Mycroft by the wrong name.  

And Mycroft didn’t call Erich anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. During the 1930s, the Nazis burned books that were viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings)  
> 2\. The pieces of Hitler's speech were sourced from a January 1944 broadcast.  
> (http://der-fuehrer.org/reden/english/44-01-30.htm)  
> 3\. The Nazi government took a strong interest in promoting traditional German culture and music.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_music_in_World_War_II#German_songs)  
> 4\. You can listen to Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier at:  
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erD1Yy-4F5M&t=1010s)  
> 5\. The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft was a national network of German regional public radio and television broadcasting companies active from 1925 until 1945. RRG's broadcasts were receivable in all parts of the country and were used extensively for Nazi propaganda after 1933.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft)


	16. February 1944.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you want me to ask who he is?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read and write enough Holmescest, you start to wonder if "unhealthy Holmesian coping strategies" shouldn't be a tag!
> 
> At least, I think it should! ❤️

**Late February, 1944.**

“Do you want me to ask who he is?”

The end of the winter had come hard and fast over Germany; with scouring rains, and wind that threatened to tear the siding from their buildings.  The loose edges rattled ominously in the night, like Mother Nature was furious, and trying to blow the whole of Germany into the sea. 

Mycroft could feel the goosebumps on Erich’s skin where the blanket had been pulled askew, and he smoothed it back into place.  He always seemed to radiate heat, but now the sweat was cooling on their skin, turning into a sticky film that Mycroft wanted to scrub away.  

In a few minutes.  For now, Erich’s dark head was pillowed on his chest, the heavy weight of his arm throw over his stomach.  It was comfortable. 

No.

It had  _ become _ comfortable.  Mycroft had allowed it to be. They had both needed the human contact, and the cheap oblivion of temporary forgetfulness. He knew they weren’t the only ones; but for the most part, people pretended not to see.  

They didn’t ask, because they all had their methods of coping.  Some were simply more human, more flesh and blood and gasping breaths, than they were found at the bottom of a beer mug.

“Who who is?”  Mycroft demurred blandly.

“The man you wish I was.”

“There’s no man.”  

Against his chest, Erich’s laugh was a thin, gallows thing; a humourless huff of breath that made Mycroft’s heart tense for one strangled beat.  He knew about Erich’s lover; the glorious Hans with the golden hair, currently stationed--  _ no, stuck _ \- somewhere in occupied France.  Knew how desperately Erich missed him, and how his face would light up with every sporadic letter.

Even if half the lines were blotted black and redacted, the presence of those spidery ballpoint lines meant that he was still alive.  

Mycroft tried not to think about Greg, or to wonder if he was safe.  If he was still in Italy, or if he’d been reassigned somewhere else. 

Helen had had a daughter, and it was too painful to wonder if she would ever meet her father.  Or if the man that came back from these extended sieges would be the same laughing, generous hearted man that Mycroft had loved, for a time.

It was simply one more thing he couldn’t afford.

If Erich noticed the way Mycroft’s arms tightened around him, he didn’t mention it.  It wasn’t the first time-- for either of them-- and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

“I know there is, Kristian.  If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to… But I thought--”

“There’s no one.”

“I know you don’t write home to your girlfriend.  If you loved her as much as you pretend to, you wouldn’t be here with me.”  Erich’s smile slotted against Mycroft’s pulse when he leaned up to kiss him.  He smelled of sex and a hint of soap and shaving foam, of clean sweat-- his own, and Erich’s, smeared together on his skin until they couldn’t tell where one had ended and the other began.

With gentle affection, Mycroft combed his fingers through Erich’s soft, shorn curls, and felt him relax back against his heart.  It was so easy with him; a touch, a kiss, and the man in his arms would let the question slide away again. Forgotten under the tingling warmth of Mycroft’s hands moving over his touch-starved skin.

It was moments like that, that Mycroft was reminded-- unbidden, and unwilling-- that he was damned.

For all the fleeting physical similarities, this wasn’t this brother.  And  _ God _ , he didn’t which facet of his vile isolation had twisted and corrupted itself into this.  A fouled parody of the love he had for his little brother; and Mycroft wanted to peel away his skin so he could scrub at the stains underneath.

_ Fraternizing with the enemy _ .

_ “And what if I’m bent like you?  I might be, you know. I’ve thought about it.” _

Erich’s fingers were broad palmed and calloused when he reached beneath the blankets, and Mycroft allowed him to curl his fingers around the soft length of his cock.  Neither of them had looked for this, but for a few moments, in the midst of all this death, they could pretend they were alive.

The only certain thing in war was that people died.  They’d both had people-shaped holes carved into their lives; spaces their loved ones should have been.  And Mycroft knew he was only there to stem the terrible emotional bleeding; and that eventually, it wouldn’t be enough.

Erich was the same for him.  A proxy for the little brother he loved, and who he might never speak to again.  At the beginning of the war, Mycroft had consoled himself that it would be over before Sherlock turned eighteen.  It had been the marked, red circled date on the calendar. And it had come, and gone, while the fighting remained.

“You know about Hans, you could tell me.  We’d have the same secrets, and neither of us could it against the other.”  Erich knew how he liked to be touched, and in the black-on-black darkness, Mycroft could see the motions of his calloused fingers beneath the sheets.  It felt obscene.

Like taking communion when he was a child-- closing his eyes as the minister had instructed, because it was a gesture of faith.  A sacrificial wafer that tasted of paper, and Mycroft had never been able to imagine that it was anything else.

_ And lead us not into temptation,  _

_ but deliver us from evil.  _

Mycroft didn't’t love Erich.  And he didn’t believe in God. But supposed he must be damned.  

“There’s nobody, not anymore.”  Mycroft’s voice broken when he spoke, and Erich’s fingers tightened for an instant around his hardening length.

“Dead?”

“Gone.”

Erich’s weight soothed the ache in Mycroft’s chest when he leaned over him, their joined weight making the bed springs protest with a squeak.  And Mycroft didn’t know what Erich had assumed, but he didn’t ask any more questions. 

He offered release, and took the same.  And when he tangled his fingers in Mycroft’s hair, they both knew he was thinking of Hans.  Wishing he could trade his place for Mycroft’s, a soul for a soul. 

Happily condemning the proxy for the original.  And Mycroft would have done the same in his place, if he could.  

He didn’t want Sherlock like this, he swore to himself.  He didn’t want to know the heat of his body; or how his dark, new adult’s voice would sound with climax.  Mycroft was his brother,  _ his brother _ , and he loved him… 

_ He loved him... _

He just wanted to be close to him again.

To know he was alive.

It had been so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Paris wasn't liberated by the Allies until late August of 1944.


	17. April 1944.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months was eternity in wartime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random fact! I've had 'Farewell to Christopher', from The Imitation Game soundtrack, on repeat while I've been writing a lot of this fic. It's a really lovely piece of music, and I'm pretty sure it's going to forever remind me of Mycroft from now on!

**April 1944.**

England seemed strange, after so long abroad.  

Here, there was no fear of speaking English.  Here, it was Mycroft’s mother tongue on all the signs, and all the voices around him.  This was the land of his family, and his family’s family, stretching back into antiquity.

This was the soil that held their bones.

For six months, Mycroft had thought of little but getting home.  And now that he was there, the streets seemed unfamiliar and unkind; the eyes of the passerby seemed to linger just a little too long.

 _Was he compromised?_  They seemed to whisper, _What had he done while he was there?  Can we ever really, truly, trust someone like that?_

_What did he do to survive?_

Six months was eternity in wartime.

The Home Office didn’t seem to know what to do with him.  They’d apologized for what he’d been through, and praised him for the information he’d managed to bring back.  It would save lives, they’d promised-- it was a miracle he’d escaped with anything.

Bravo, good show.  Top marks.

They’d called him a hero to his face, and whispered when they thought he wasn’t looking.  Mycroft couldn’t blame them; they were limited in their dull, simple skulls. Incapable of trusting anything they couldn’t kill.

He’d left home an unwilling spy, and returned an unknown quantity.

But more than anything, Mycroft wanted to go back to work.  He longed for the simplicity of a cipher, and the pride that came with solving the puzzle.  He wanted to do good for his country, preferably that didn’t come with the price tag of his own blood and sanity.

He wanted his own life back.  And to forget everything that had happened from the moment Mr. Withering-Smythe had appeared at his hut door.

When everything had seemed simpler.  Mycroft had known who he was, and how to do his job. He was _good_ at his job.

It was impossible, of course.  Mycroft wasn’t the same, and no man could wrench back time that had already been lost.

Now his mouth moved strangely around the English syllables, tongue clumsy with anxiety.  Now _Kristian_ was as familiar as _Mycroft_ .  More familiar.  He had to clench his hands to fight back the muscle memory salute, and bite his tongue to choke back _Heil Hitler_.  

He had adapted to survive, and now?  Mycroft felt lost somewhere across the Channel.  

It was all for the greater good, and England thanked him for his service.  A pat on the back, and a closed office door-- but _England_ wasn’t there when he stared up at the ceiling at night, unable to close his eyes for fear of talking in his sleep.

And so, with three months ‘leave’ as thanks, Mycroft left the low, squat government offices and faced the ruins of London.

There would be more discussions.  A psych evaluation. _Get some rest, Holmes.  Best thing you can do before the formalities._

A hearing, if they had any doubts about his actions over the last six months.

Mycroft felt like a marked man as he walked through the city, tetherless and with no set direction in mind.  A tightness had settled in his chest that pained when he drew breath, and he coughed reflexively to try to ease the ache.

Of course, they’d asked if he wanted a lift to the train station.  It was the least they could do, under the circumstances. _You look a little peaky, Mr. Holmes.  Are you sure you don’t want us to take you?  It’s no trouble._

He hadn’t wanted the help.  And hadn’t been certain he was going home.

Hartfield.  Sussex. Where his father’s garden would be alive with new green sprouts, and his parents would be waiting.

HIs family would be informed that he was back in the country.  Alive, if not entirely well. Mycroft supposed he should be grateful; he still had all of his requisite parts intact.  The analytical side of his brain could find no better word but _miracle_.

But it didn’t feel like one.

Would Sherlock ever be able to see him the same way again?  Or would his brother share the subtle distrust that had coloured every interaction since his rescue?  He would want answers that Mycroft didn’t know how to give.

Five days of hiding, and fleeing by night.  Two men dead in his arms, and three more at his hand.  Their blood in the creases of his hands, and dried on his cuffs.  

 _Erich_ …  

Finally they’d made it to Belgium, and the port of Antwerp.  British contacts had helped them aboard the Demeter under cover of darkness; and Mycroft had scarcely dared to draw breath until his feet were safe once more on the stones of England.

London had aged in his absence, and as he walked, Mycroft took in the sights of the city he loved; and the devastation the war had brought on her.  

His brother would be eighteen now, and Mycroft could feel every day like his own failure.  Would he have enlisted? Nobody would tell him; and in his mind’s eye Mycroft could only too clearly imagine his little brother…

His Sherlock…

Exhaustion blurred the lines of his thoughts, transposing Sherlock’s sharp cheekbones over Erich’s softness.  The thick heat of blood soaked curls as they slid between his fingers, and _oh…_

With a sharp, reflexive gag, Mycroft spat sour bile into the streaming gutter.  

His head throbbed, a thudding bass beat between his temples.  And with clammy, cold hands, he scrubbed his palms over his face, and wished the world would stop spinning.  

Maybe it was stress.  Or the travel.

Slowly, Mycroft sank down on a cold bench, and waited for the nauseous wave of chills to pass.  It had been like this for days; and they always did. Eventually.

And it wasn’t as if he had anywhere to be.

His throat ached, parched and sore; and for a moment, Mycroft considered pushing himself back to his feet.  To search out a cup of tea, which would surely chase away this chill, as well.

But he was so tired, so very tired… Just a few more minutes, he bargained with himself.  A few more, and he would get up.

“Mycroft?  Mycroft!”

And just before the world went dark, Mycroft saw his own avenging angel.  And wondered how strange it was, that an angel would wear his own hand-me-down coat.

***

_Missing, presumed dead._

For months, Sherlock had railed against the idea.  It was impossible-- his brother had promised, and Mycroft, for all his flaws, had never lied to him.  

He’d avoided the truth, but Sherlock maintained that that wasn’t the same thing.  No.

Those hadn’t been his secrets to tell.  State secrets.

Mycroft wasn’t dead.  He wasn’t. The rest of the world was simply wrong, and wouldn’t they be embarrassed when his brother came home?  One day, he’d walk back through the doors, and everything would be fine again.

In those long months, Sherlock hadn’t understood why his father was so adamantly opposed to him taking the job offer in Milton Keynes; behind the same high walls where he had once found his big brother.

But nor could he ignore the shivering feeling that had run down his spine whenever he was in the same room as Director Marten.   _Come work for us, lad.  You’ve the mind for it! We’ve had our eye on your for a long time now, come show us we were right about you._

There was something in the appraising way he watched Sherlock; waiting, measuring.  Comparing him to the brother that was gone, and the uncle they’d lost.

And then the message had come.

In the middle of the afternoon, when Sherlock had been trying- and failing- to focus on the microscope slides in front of him.  Just a little slip of paper from the front office, with the secretary’s looping scrawl.

 _Your brother has been found._ _  
_ _In London for debriefing.  
_ _Call home.  
_ _-Mummy_

Without glancing back, Sherlock had boarded the first train to London.  He’d done his waiting, until his patience had turned thin and frayed-- and now his brother was alive, and Sherlock wasn’t going to waste one more second.

Of course, he’d never expected to have to search him out!  The Home Office had no idea which way he had gone, and the guard at the front door was only vaguely certain of the direction he had left in.

A direction, and all of London in the drizzling rain.  

But he’d found him.

Thin and wracked with fever, in donated clothes that were two sizes too large; and a coat that hung limply from his shoulders.  

On a sidewalk bench, his face in his hands.

Sherlock would have known him anywhere.

And this time, it was Sherlock that crushed his missing brother to his chest, and buried his face in his grimy auburn hair.  It didn’t matter if people saw, or that Mycroft scarcely had the energy left to hug him back. None of it mattered, because Mycroft was alive.  Here.

Tangible.  His laboured, sticky breath against Sherlock’s neck, and damp to the skin.

“I knew you were alive.. _I knew it_.  You wouldn’t leave me, and you haven’t.  You’re home… You’re home, Myc, and you’re going to let me help you.  I’m not losing you again. Do you understand? Never losing you… Never...’  Sherlock murmured against the top of his head, and wrapped the loose edges of his jacket around his brother’s shaking body.

“I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And he's home! Banged, and bruised, but alive!


	18. May 1944.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Mycroft would call out for Sherlock.

**May 1944.**

Sometimes, Mycroft would call out for Sherlock.  Lost in the grip of the fever, he would press his face into his sweat soaked pillow; voice broken with a pidgin blend of English and German.  Languages had never been Sherlock’s forte, but he knew enough to parse out the, “Please, please, Lock… please...”

_ Bitte… Bitte… _

He wasn’t sure what his brother was pleading for, but the broken syllables felt like shards of glass in his chest.

Only half aware of reality, Mycroft would reach out to him in the dark, fumbling with a desperate hope, and forever surprised when Sherlock reached back to him.  And he wanted to promise that it would be alright now; that he was safe. Home. 

But Mycroft had been gone for months, and who knew what memories had returned with him?

In truth, Sherlock wasn’t sure he slept at all through those endless days; listening to Mycroft’s delirious ramblings, and the deep, suffocating cough that seized his body.  The rasp in his breathing as the pneumonia filled his lungs was terrifying; a wet, bubbling sound on every laboured inhalation.

The silence was worse.

Sometimes, Sherlock would wake with a start, and hold his hand against his brother’s face, just to feel for the stale, damp flutter of his breath.

So, armed with endless cups of tea, cold flannels, and a small bottle of the new miracle penicillin, Sherlock waged his war against the germs that threatened to take his brother away.  

The Home Office couldn’t have him.  The German army couldn’t have him. 

Sherlock had decided at birth that Mycroft was his-- always.

And eventually, he won.

Sherlock would never tell anyone how he had wept his relief into the sweat soaked bed clothes on the night his brother’s fever had broken.  Or how he had cradled Mycroft’s head against his chest as he slept, one hand pressed to the steadying metronome beat of his heart, because it was the only thing that convinced him that Mycroft’s stillness was simply sleep.

Healthy, restful sleep.

“You should have left me in hospital.”  Mycroft pointed out in his breathless, ragged way, some days later, “You could have gotten sick yourself.”

“I’m a chemist, do you think I can’t contend with a few germs?  Besides, you would have been miserable in the hospital, and exposed to Lord knows what other things.  Better for everyone if you’re at home, where I could take care of you.”

Mycroft had gotten used to the roll of his brother’s eyes, and the unsubtle rattle of his penicillin on the edge of his saucer, when Sherlock reminded him to take his medicine.  Such a strange thought that something derived from mold could work such miracles.

“Mummy thought I should be sent away, she told me as much when she came to see me yesterday.”

“Then she’s an idiot, and you shouldn’t listen to her.  Take your penicillin before you forget.”

“I’m waiting for my tea to cool.  I don’t relish the idea of burning my--”  Mycroft’s hand gripped his cup unsteadily as a wracking wave of breathless coughing gripped him, and he had to wait for it to subside before he finished.

Sherlock’s whole body tensed by the window, every muscle tightening in preparation to move.  

In case he needed him.

But the fit passed, and eventually they both relaxed once more.  Mycroft still sounded terrible, but with every passing day his breath came a little more easily, and the sallow grey of his complexion turned a little healthier.

“You make a good nurse.”

“I make a  _ terrible _ nurse, but I’m stubborn enough to put up with you.  Any proper nurse would run away from your bedside, and then where would you be?”  

From the bed, Mycroft cracked a smile, and Sherlock took it as an invitation to sink back down on the edge of the mattress.  There was something determined in his blue eyes as he pressed the inside of his wrist to Mycroft’s clammy forehead-- he had lost his brother before, the speaking look seemed to say, and it would never happen again.

For all of his life, Mycroft had cared for him.  Looked out for him. 

Protected him, even when Sherlock hadn’t wanted it, or appreciated it.

Loved him, even when neither of them had the words to say it.

Now it was Sherlock’s turn to take care of him.  

He wasn’t a child anymore, and Sherlock had known what he wanted since he was twelve.  But the age difference between twelve and nineteen had loomed too large--

But between eighteen and twenty-five?  That was something wholly different.

“Probably be in very dire straits.  So I’ll be glad I have you at my bedside, instead!”  Mycroft quipped breathlessly, and reached out to take his cup once more.  “I don’t think I had a decent cup the whole time I was away.”

“Then drink it, don’t just look at it!  It’s going to get cold.”

In the half light of the afternoon, Mycroft obediently sipped his tea, and watched his brother move restlessly around the room.  He’d grown in the months he’d been away; taller, and broader across the shoulders, his body finally settling into his adult proportions, instead of the too-long arms and legs of adolescence.

The childhood promise of their shared hands had solidified in the elegant span of his fingers on the violin strings, and he would play for Mycroft in the evenings.  Delighting in the American swing music he loved (and the fact that it would have given his violin tutor a fit to hear it, instead of the classics!)

But the mad curls were the same, sticking out at wild, rakish angles from running his fingers through them in agitation.  And the eyes… They were the same pale, sea glass colour he had always loved.

Sherlock had grown up brilliant, and beautiful, and it made Mycroft’s chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the pneumonia.

And everything to do with his own shameful guilt.  

With the memory of Erich’s skin under his hands, and the knowledge that he had  _ wanted _ .  Even when it had been Sherlock’s face behind his eyelids, and _ God _ , but he had missed him.  Had tried to tell himself that it was only the distance speaking.

An ersatz Sherlock.

Certainly, Erich had always known that Mycroft wasn’t thinking of him-- though he doubted he’d guessed the vile truth.  And Erich hadn’t been picturing Mycroft… They’d used one another, mutually and willingly; and Mycroft had no guilt about that.

It was, perhaps, the only thing that didn’t bring him shame.

Now he was home, and the fiction had been replaced by flesh and sinew, and the cool pressure of Sherlock’s body beside him when he sat back down on the bed.  And sometimes, Mycroft felt like his baby brother could deduce all the hateful, wicked things that ran through his mind when it was unguarded. How easy it would be to set down his cup, and close the space between them, and…

When Mycroft looked up from his tea, Sherlock was watching him.

Dark, and intent; his eyes met Mycroft’s with all of his childhood demanding turned possessive.  Craving.

“I know you were with someone while you were away.”  

Mycroft could only nod-- there was no point in denying it.

“And you feel guilty?”  

It wasn’t much of a question, more like a statement, the edges of the words clipped off.  Had Sherlock’s voice been so low and deep before he’d left? Mycroft didn’t think so; it had still wavered at the edges, pitching and cracking.  Now it had become permanent, and the new timbre of it made his stomach tense.

Another nod.

“Not because he was German.”

“No, not for that.”

_ Because he was like you.  And I didn’t know if I would ever see you again. _

Mycroft’s teaup rattled in the saucer as he set it on the bedside table unsteadily, steam still rising in lazy ribbons from the surface.  He felt tense all over, every muscle drawn up in a fight or flight reaction-- but in truth, he could do neither.

He felt pinned in place by that searching gaze, his chest flayed open and sinful heart laid bare between the halves of his striped pajama jacket.

Mycroft didn’t want to tell him about Erich.  Those blood stained memories were too close to his bones, coloured in straw gold and bright red, and the flickering glow of lantern light.

The bed dipped again when Sherlock stretched out behind his brother, their bodies slotted together, missing angles finding their match.  Through the tangled blankets, Mycroft could feel the hard press of his arousal; and the possessive way Sherlock flattened his hand against the thudding beat of his heart, fingers splayed wide.

Like a frame.  Or a cage.

“Never again. Not with anyone else.”

“Lock-- we… This is wrong.  Illegal. We  _ can’t. _ ”

Sherlock’s breath was warm and quick against the back of his neck, and with a shudder, Mycroft dipped his head to bare his own flushed skin beneath his lips.   _ Never again _ .

“So is sleeping with the enemy.  Or being homosexual. Your point?  Those are rules made by other people; they don’t apply to us.”

Mycroft wanted to protest-- because he didn’t give a damn about the morality, not when Sherlock’s fingers were moving down his chest, catching buttons and flicking them open.  And not when they dipped below the hem of his pajama pants, searching for the feverishly warm hollow of his hip.

His stomach jumped, tense, and he could feel the vibrations of Sherlock’s laughter.   _ Tell me this feels wrong _ , his touch demanded,  _ Tell me you don’t need this just as badly as I do. _

But if they were caught?  The world would not be kind to them.  Could he really expose his brother to that kind of danger?

“ _ Sherlock _ …”

It was fast, too fast-- and Sherlock’s hands too tight, and the weight on Mycroft’s chest turning his breath shallow.  The sheets tangled around them when Mycroft finally twisted around to face his brother. His limbs still felt clumsy, and heavy with illness; but that too, he knew, would pass.

And Sherlock tasted of tea and exhaustion when he bent his head to kiss into Mycroft’s mouth, searching for his protests.  They had both been with other people, before-- but this quicksilver desire was new. 

A spark between them.  And them alone.

“Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll stop.  I love you, Mycroft… And I’ve made my choice.  I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and change my mind.”

They were a human impossibility, the unsolvable riddle.

Puzzling one another out since childhood, and searching for the solution.

Broken down into their essential parts, and slotted together-- made whole, and made new.

Drenched in late afternoon sunlight, Sherlock was the most beautiful thing in the world; and Mycroft wanted nothing more than to pull his brother into his arms, so tightly he could feel the shared beat of their hearts against his chest.

“I love you, too, brother mine…”

And maybe they were damned for this, but when Mycroft kissed him again-- over and over, until they were both lightheaded and laughing?

It felt like salvation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Penicillin was invented in 1928, but wasn't mass produced for public use until 1942.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#History)


	19. September 1945.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war continued for another year and a half.

**September 1945.**

The war continued for another year and a half.

And when Mycroft returned to Bletchley, his name cleared of any potential wrongdoing-- and praised for both his bravery, and the information he’d managed to secure in Germany-- he wasn’t alone.

For almost exactly six years, Mycroft had done his best to spare Sherlock from the path that had been laid before his own feet.  He’d been a child, at the start of the war; the bright, impulsive light at the centre of Mycroft’s heart. He’d promised himself that Sherlock would have other options.  A chance to be young, and loved, and safe.

But there were things in life that were simply out of their control.  The war had stretched on, longer than anyone had expected, and the bloody tax of it was incalculable.

In the end, Director Marten’s offer became something of a salvation.

_ “We need your brains here working for us.  Not dashed all over the inside of your helmet…”   _

As the Holmes brothers made their way north to Milton Keynes, it was their Uncle Rudy’s words that kept playing through Mycroft’s mind.  He understood better now, how their uncle could have chivvied him into the service, and the weight he must have carried on his soul.

And Mycroft forgave him.

Bletchley was a world unto itself; away from the bloodshed and the bombs.  It was a world of numbers and puzzles. It was the place for people who thought differently; who could look at a map, and see the patterns that other people couldn’t.

A secret place behind a high wall, where the terrible calculations saved lives.  And ended them.

Barred from the world by a high fence.

For nearly six years, those fences had marked the boundaries of Mycroft’s world; and it had been a lonely place.  But that day, approaching the gates, Sherlock had slid his hand into his brother’s, and squeezed.

In the space between their seats, Mycroft had threaded their fingers together, and held on.  

He could only pray that someday, Sherlock would be able to forgive him.  

Sherlock had smiled, and kissed the back of his knuckles when the guards at the gate weren’t looking.  

There was nothing to forgive.

Their first anniversary was lost in a haze of exhaustion, and the chaos that came with the announcement that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide.  It seemed an impossible thing. For years, it had been his voice over the radio, man at the head of his army. Gone. Simply, gone.

Mycroft had rested his head on Sherlock’s chest, and listened to the slow, sleeping cadence of his heart.

Neither of them could bring themselves to mind, much.  They were together-- the rest didn’t seem as important as it once had.  In the darkness, they lay together and dared to think of a life beyond the war.  Of what they would do, and where they would go. 

A fledgling hope that there could be more to life than this.

But some things stayed with you, and when the following winter brought Mycroft another bout of pneumonia, it was Sherlock that stepped in and demanded he rest.  Sherlock, who borrowed one of he rattling old cars from the motorpool, and chivvied Mycroft into seeing the doctor in town.

Sherlock, who had always been unfairly immune to seemingly everything, who curled into the thin space at the edge of Mycroft’s bed, and cradled his brother against his chest at night.  

With his good care, and terrible nursing-- pushing and stubborn, and forever reminding Mycroft to take his penicillin, with all the precise routine and authority of a drill instructor-- the worst passed quickly, and Mycroft was back on his feet in no time at all. 

And at the end of the war, they were together.  

Together, when the radio had announced the end of the fighting, and there had been music in the streets.  Half the country was in ruins, and there was no money to rebuild-- but for those few, sweet days, there was a community hope that things would get better.

That whatever might come next, and however hard the work may be?  They had mourned. Starved. Feared together, and huddled in the dark, beneath the whistling thunder of the bombs.

They’d survived.

They’d triumphed.

And they would be able to welcome home the loved ones that had been gone so very long.

The Holmes brothers had been together when their work was destroyed.  Years of Mycroft’s life reduced to brilliant sparks and cinders against the black night sky.  

The war was over, but some things were too dangerous to risk.

The war was over, but the first had taught them not to trust the peace.

Together, when their names had been added to the Official Secrets Act.

Together, when they’d scrawled their names in black ballpoint ink at the bottom of the page, and sworn to never speak of this to anyone.  

When their commanding officers spoke of commendation, and medals, in considering voices. And apologized that they couldn’t be given with proper celebration.  It seemed only fitting that medals given for secret work, should be done in secret. 

King and country thank you both for all you’ve done.

_ “I wanted better than this, Myc... For the both of you.  What was the bloody point of it all, if we were only going to end up back here again?”   _

Shoulder to shoulder, they looked out the window that had been theirs.  Sherlock stole kisses as Mycroft attempted to fold the last year and a half into their two suitcases.  He didn’t ask where they were going next, or what Mycroft had planned for his future.

As long as they were together, he didn’t care.

“Are you expecting me to pack your things, too, brother mine?  At least help a little, or we’ll miss the train.”

“Is this how you felt when you came to visit me?  I don’t know who Sherlock Holmes is, outside the fence, anymore.”

Mycroft turned away from his packing, and brushed the unruly curls from his brother’s forehead, “Neither of us does, Lock.  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Together. But for now, we have a train, and Father will be there to meet us in Hartfield when we arrive.”

Home first… Their parents were waiting.

Arm in arm, they were together when they left Bletchley for the very last time.


	20. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But it had come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting here for about ten minutes, trying to figure out what I was going to say here. This story has been so near and dear to my heart, and it's hard to believe that this is the end of it! 
> 
> I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to comment; it's been truly amazing to hear your thoughts and insights. 
> 
> And now, on to the epilogue! 💕

**October 1959.**

Like every afternoon, the steps of Old Bailey were crowded by reporters, trying to catch a snapshot of the recently condemned.  There was a public interest in murderers and madmen, and they enjoyed the stories of the vile and sinful things people got up to when they thought they could get away with it.

A morbid curiousity about the dark side-- Mycroft thought it was human nature to be intrigued by things that should horrify.  Tabloid journalists crafting their reputations on stories of sensationalized human suffering.

But Mycroft was a busy man, and after the war he had made a name for himself in certain circles.  Quiet circles, that moved in the shadows and pulled the strings that made the government dance. 

From behind the heavy curtain, Mycroft turned rulers and diplomats into marionettes-- how better to make certain there would be peace?

They’d made a life for themselves, he and Sherlock.  And if people thought they were strange? Well, so many things were strange after the war.  And people had their own troubles to see to. In the quiet of their house, they shared their meals, their bed, and their lives.

Nobody really looked twice at two brothers living together.

_ Such nice boys, but the war… Well.  The War. _  And that was all most people needed to hear.  

People simply hadn’t come back the same.  

Mycroft wasn’t there when Gregory Lestrade pleaded guilty to Gross Indecency before the public tribunal.  Or when he was sentenced to two years labour; because it was less terrifying than allowing them to make his body the prison. 

It had been seventeen years since they’d stood on the snowy sidewalk and promised to meet for a drink after the war.  

They never had, but sometimes-- when the radio played Billie Holiday, or Benny Goodman, Mycroft could remember being young and terribly in love for the first time.  Of his first kisses, and the cold of the dance hall wall against his back, in a world that seemed so different from his present today.

Mycroft read it in the news the next day over breakfast.  In plain black and white, it told the lurid tale of a decent copper, with a wife and two daughters.  Caught in the public gents, with his trousers unfastened and his back against the filthy, tiled wall.  

For a moment, Mycroft wondered who the other man had been.  If he'd fled, face hidden in the collar of his coat, when the police had begun their raid.  

And how Helen was going to cope.

Helen, who had always known who Gregory was, and who had loved him-- and he, her-- for all these years.  

“He’s strong, Myc, he’ll be fine.  It won’t be like… Him. Lestrade is a different man.  It’s not the same. They won’t break him.” Sherlock’s voice was low and quiet.  But when he set down his violin, and leaned over to squeeze Mycroft’s hand, it was just a little too tight.  “Maybe you should stay in. The country won’t fall if you play hooky for one day.”

_ Don’t go out there today.  I’m afraid you won’t come home. _

Mycroft paused and looked down at their hands, and nodded.  “I’ll just put the kettle back on then, shall I? 

  
  


**July 1967.**

Mycroft was forty-seven when he stood beside Lord Arran and Mr. Jenkins, and cast his vote.  One by one, the others followed; and of the 117 people in the room, over a hundred voted for change.  

_You are people_ , said the rows of signatures, and the sea of raised hands,  _You can love, too._  


He was not sick, and he was not mad.  Not deviant, or predatory, or wicked.

To be gay was not any of these things, his vote said.  

_ I am not sick. _

He was just a man, as he had always been.  He was so much more than the attraction that nature had decided for him.

And with the few strokes of a pen, the ink still wet, the world around him changed.

The Sexual Offences Act had come too late for Gregory.  Too late for so many people. 

But it had come. 

“Are you going to go find someone new, now?” Sherlock asked that night over dinner, as he methodically speared his unlucky peas on the end of his fork.  One at a time. As if he could hide the fact that he wasn’t eating.

The grey had begun to seep into his black curls, threading salt into the pepper, and marking his age.  There were faint lines at the corners of his mouth, and the creases in his familiar hands had deepened.  

And Mycroft still knew he had never seen anyone so beautiful.

Middle age had come gently to them both, a luxury that not everyone had been allotted.  It had come with Mycroft forever stealing the blankets in the night, and Sherlock refusing to do the washing up.  With pictures of their parents on the mantle,  _God rest their souls_ , and friends that no longer questioned why the Holmes brothers had never found other people to marry.  

They kept their shared secrets, and the guilt of Mycroft's youth had long since faded; leaving only his perpetual gratitude behind.

Every morning he woke to Sherlock's head beside his on the pillow, and that?  Was miraculous.

“Leave you?  No…  Never. This law is a change for the next generation.  Not for me. They can start their lives with a little less fear, and make something better with the world.  It gives them a bit more of a chance.”

“Mycroft Holmes, still saving the world.”

“If you like...  Will you? Find someone, I mean.  You could. It’s an option, now.”

_ “Then it would be a tragedy, and change nothing.  For both our sakes, I hope he doesn’t.” _

_ “He’s not gone, not… He’s not…  He can’t be. He promised he’d always come home!” _

“No.”  Sherlock closed the space between them, his chair squeaking on the shiny linoleum floor.  He was warm against Mycroft’s side, and there was possession in the way he pulled him close. 

“I know where my home is, Mycroft.  It’s right here.  With you.”

They saw all of the beautiful parts of each other.  And together, they didn’t have to hide.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Gross indecency is a crime in some parts of the English-speaking world, originally used to criminalize sexual activity between men that fell short of sodomy, which required penetration. It was the law used to condemn both Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_indecency)  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde)  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing)
> 
> 2\. The Sexual Offenses Act permitted homosexual acts between two consenting adults over the age of twenty-one.  
> (https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/sexual-offences-act-1967/sexual-offences-act-1967/)


End file.
